Genesis 1:26-31
Psalm 139 (VU p. 861) Section 3 & 4
1 Corinthians 15:35-49
Mark 12:28-34
Song of Songs (aka Song of Solomon)

Let us pray…God of resurrection, incarnation and love, help us to love all parts of our selves. Help us that each part of our being: our mind, body, spirit, will become dedicated to the love that you have shown us in the message and life of Jesus the Christ. May we be open to your word of renewal and transformation. Amen.

I will never forget that day way back in grade six. We had a class that invited different religious leaders into our class room to talk with the students. I remember the class because it was the first time that I had a Bible in hands. I have to admit I wasn’t all that interested in what was being talked about so I began to leaf through the Bible. Somewhere near the beginning some words caught my attention.

1616 The Fall of Man by Hendrik Goltz

“Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine, your anointing oils are fragrant, your name is perfume poured out; therefore the maidens love you.”-Song of Songs 1:1-3

Naturally I was intrigued so I kept on reading…what else was there…

“He brought me to the banqueting house, and his intention towards me was love. Sustain me with raisins; refresh me with apples; for I am faint with love. O that his left hand were under my head, and that his right hand embraced me!” -Song of Songs 2:4-6

Are you blushing yet? Little did I know at the time that I had stumbled upon a book of the Bible that is rarely quoted in the lectionary. A book that some early church fathers thought should be reserved for the spiritually mature and that studying it might be harmful for the novice. It is a small book nestled between Ecclesiastes and Isaiah. It is known as either Song of Songs or the Song of Solomon. For millennium it has been called holy and special. In the first century of the common era Rabbi Akiba (ca.17–ca.137 CE) declared, “Heaven forbid that any man in Israel ever disputed that Song of Songs is holy. For the whole world is not worth the day on which Song of Songs was given to Israel, for all the Writings are holy and Song of Songs is holy of holies.” (Mishnah Yadayim 3:5). Similarly, Martin Luther called it das Hohelied (the high song). This is still its name in German, Danish, Swedish and in Dutch.

According to Jewish tradition the book is an allegory of God’s love for the Children of Israel. In keeping with this understanding, it is read by Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews on Shabbat eve, Friday night, to symbolize the love between the Jewish People and God that is also represented by Shabbat. Over the centuries it has mostly been interpreted as being an allegory of the soul and Christ. The Song was regarded by Christian theologians either as a set of songs describing the relationship of Christ and the Church or as an allegory of the soul’s relationship to Christ and God, until late in the 19th century. Since that time Christian scholars have generally become more interested in the literal sense of the Song.

So let’s hear a little more…

“How sweet is your love, my sister, my bride! How much better is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your oils than any spice! Your lips distil nectar, my bride; honey and milk are under your tongue;” –Song of Songs 4:10-11

So why erotic love poetry on this Transfiguration Sunday? I have decided to deviate from the lectionary reading to talk to you about the fleshiness, the earthiness of this life.

You see this week, with Tuesday being Valentine’s Day, I listened to the various radio shows about love, sex and the future of monogamy on CBC I thought that it might be interesting to look at what love poetry we have in our Christian tradition.

Now I know that the three things that you never bring up in polite company is religion, politics and….you guessed it sex. For many reasons in our culture even though our advertising is highly sexualized most people get a bit squeamish when it comes to talking about sex. Even when we talk about love and the place of sex as part of the expression of love we usually stammer, perspire and blush. Just think back to when you had to endure “the birds and the bees talk” or when you had to give “the talk” to your teen. It isn’t easy. Sex is a natural part of life, but many of us have a difficult time finding a place for it within our understanding of spirituality, religion and the church.

A scholar once said the Christianity is the most materialistic religion there is and you know why? Jesus was concerned about the body. Jesus ministered to the flesh. His ministry was about caring, healing and feeding the body. He washed feet. His miracles began with the wine at the wedding feast in Cannan and one of the complaints made by his opponents was that he was always eating! Sounds, like the beginnings of the United Church to me.

In the United Church, the list of possible scripture verses given as possibilities for a wedding service includes the one that begins with…

“The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag.”- Song of Songs 2:8-9

Over the years I think that I have had two couples choose this passage and every time, every time, someone in the wedding party giggles when they hear, “my beloved is like a stage.”

But the main reason aside from Valentine’s Day with the talk of love is that we are entering the beginning of Lent. This week we have Shrove Tuesday aka Fat Tuesday, and Ash Wednesday. Days that concentrate on controlling the desires of the flesh, and then we begin the walk to the cross. But what sometimes gets lost in the death and resurrection of Jesus is that he had a body. As one scholar said, “Jesus was God’s perfect example of humanity, and Jesus was humanities perfect example of God.” The mystery of Christmas is behind us but it continues to the cross and beyond in the resurrection. God was incarnated in human flesh. We are spirits with a body. We cannot be human without a body. For so long in Western culture we have separate body, mind and spirit instead of taking them as a whole. We tend to place more emphasis on one part instead of the whole. Most of our hang-ups about sex and the body come from St. Augustine. Doctor Ruth and Doctor Phil would have a field day with Augustine!

The resurrection of Jesus is all the more amazing because he just wasn’t a spirit, but also a body. The body through the resurrection is transformed and it is holy enough to be restored. That is amazing. We should celebrate that and honour that good news.

In Genesis we heard that we are “made in God’s image”, that we were “naked and felt no shame,” that this new “creation was good.” In the psalm we hear that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” From Jesus we are told to love our God with all our mind, spirit and strength. Our whole being is made to worship God.

To quote Pope Benedict XVI, “Song of Songs has both a literal and allegorical meaning, stating that erotic love (eros) and self-donating love (agape) is shown there as the two halves of true love, which is both giving and receiving. “1 Think about that, giving and receiving.

For human beings sex, isn’t just about procreation. It is the joining of two humans in the most intimate union possible. Perhaps sexual love freely shared in a committed relationship is the most beautiful way God gave us to say, “I love you.”

For those of you who have read the Song of Songs before you will know that this morning I have been peppering my sermon with the milder quotes from the book. I encourage you to go home and do some of your own reading. The scriptures are powerful and although I don’t know of a relationship that was cemented by someone quoting their beloved the line,

“Your lips are like a crimson thread, and your mouth is lovely. Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate behind your veil. Your neck is like the tower of David, built in courses;” -Song of Songs 4:3-4

However, I do know of one long term relationship that began with the man quoting his beloved the beautiful verses from 1 Corinthians about the characteristics of Love. So go home, crack open your Bible, and see what inspires you this week.

May we worship God and praise the Good News with our whole being. Thanks be to God.

2 Kings 5:1-14
Psalm 30 (VU pg. 757)
Mark 1:40-45

Let us pray…Healing and rejuvenating God, as we hear your words for us today. May it give us true healing. May your promise of love and commitment bring us a joy and a hope and that will mend our hearts and turn our actions in an animated prayer to you. In Christ’s holy name. Amen.

In my family we had a number of different cures for various ailments. Perhaps you still have some tried and true cures that you have handed down in your family for generations. Maybe great Aunt Ruth’s recipe for curing a cold, Uncle Bob’s sure fire way to get your hair growing on your head again or Cousin May’s concoction for guaranteeing the gender of your unborn baby.

Some cures are very strange. But what is in even stranger is some of these actually work. I remember one particular cure that we had in my family that I thought was the weirdest of all. It involved a recipe for getting rid of a wart. You took a potato, cut it in half, bury half of it, take the other half, rub it on your wart and then, when you were outside fling it over your shoulder and walk away without looking back.

The idea was as the potato rotted; your wart would fall off at the same time. Strange? Yes. Effective? Well certain family members swear by this cure. However, I don’t want you to try this at home, and say the minister told me to do it!

Now all these cures sound interesting and we might say to ourselves, “Well remedies like this cannot hurt.” But if you were to go to a doctor or a medical specialist, we would probably storm out of their office if they told you to take a cold bath with garlic and onions to cure our high blood pressure right? We expect to be cured when we visit the doctor. I remember my Grandmother would sometimes complain that her doctor didn’t do her any good. Especially when she went to the Doctor’s office and he didn’t even give her any pills to take.

When we think about it, we often expect healing to take certain forms. We expect that when we are cured we will be fine: that our physical health will take care of our spiritual or mental health. But what if healing and a cure are not the same thing? What if true healing takes more than a pill and a good nights rest?

In our readings this morning, perhaps Naaman needed more than a cure, he needed to be healed. Naaman was a powerful commander in the Syrian army, respected and valued for his work and yet he had what was called leprosy.

His condition was probably not what we label leprosy today but could have been something as minor as eczema. At the time disease was seen as a punishment for some evil deed that the person had done or perhaps punishment for something done by their parents. This leprosy could also be something that was eating him up spiritually. We know of people who are being eaten alive by greed, lust, envy, revenge, regret for previous actions, you name it. But the bottom line was that Naaman was hurting and he wanted it to stop.

Naaman had tried everything conventional at the time. Money was no object in the search for a cure but nothing worked and he was desperate. And then one day he hears a fantastic story, a slave girl, captured in the land of Israel, tells her mistress the wife of Naaman that the prophet in Samaria could cure him of his leprosy. Now Naaman was so desperate that he would try anything, even going to the prophet of his enemy, begging for help. After he is turned away by the King of Israel, the prophet Elisha hears of Naaman’s woes and offers a cure. But not the way Naaman expects.

In fact Elisha doesn’t even meet Naaman in person.A fact that must have driven Naaman up the wall. Then Elisha tells him to wash in the Jordan. The cure seems too simple, ridiculous, improbable, unlikely and a joke. But once again the healing comes in unexpected ways. Naaman’s servants encourage him to do this small thing. As Naaman bathed in the water he was cured and healed. Cured of his physical ailment and healed spiritually. By doing what the prophet commanded he was made clean.

By listening to slave and servants, Naaman had breached the social barriers between himself and others. By asking for healing he was repenting. Naaman works out his salvation with fear and trembling, as he takes a dive into the river. By agreeing to do what God asked him to do, he allowed God to cleanse him completely. By baptizing himself in the water of the Jordan, Naaman was meeting God in his life.

Healing and cure are two very different things. A cure is for our physical bodies. After the bones are set and the bruises fade the spirit still needs to be healed. It is often the ills of our heart that take the longest the heal, the hurts that fester and ach long after the physical signs of illness or trauma have vanished.

There are many hurting people in this world: victims of war and abuse. The body may be well but the true healing still needs to occur in the soul of a person.

Today on one of the Sundays during African American History month it is appropriate to remember Wilma Rudolph, who was born two months premature and not expected to live. Long before she competed in the 1956 Olympics, or won the 100 and 200 meter races in the 1960’s Olympics, or was named the 1961 Woman Athlete of the Year, or was awarded the Babe Didrikson Zaharias Award as the most outstanding female athlete in the world, Wilma Rudolph suffered from childhood diseases that threatened to end her life before her fifth birthday: measles, double pneumonia, scarlet fever and polio.

We think of medicines and doctors as effecting healing, but in addition, her mother drove two hundred miles a week to take her for physical therapy at Meharry Medical College and her sisters and brothers participated in daily leg massages, educational tutoring, and cheerleading for her progress. The healing came through family, faith, love, touch and encouragement, just as much as through medicine.

Just like the slave and the servants in the story of Naaman, God works through people, like you and me, to bring wholeness and healing to the world. Healing can be brought about through love, forgiveness or kindness. Through the presence of the Holy Spirit and through the voice or touch of a friend.

I think that it is important to remind ourselves that God doesn’t punish us by making us sick or by unfortunate things happening in our lives. Like the book of Job poetically explains, we don’t know why some suffer and others do not. All we do know is that we are not alone. We have God and one another.

Sometimes we may think what we know what we need to bring ourselves healing but only God knows for certain. Some believe that healing can only occur in their lives when the culprits are punished or when revenge is extracted. Some believe that time will heal or by forgetting past hurts that things will be made right. Sometimes our pride prevents us from reaching out for help.

But by opening up to let a little light into our lives this can be the first step toward healing. It is hard to draw the blinds back on our life, to drop the charade that everything is fine in our life to admit that we are hurt or broken. It can be hard to admit to others and to ourselves that we need healing.

I once read a story about a minister who during clinical pastoral training in a hospital met a young woman who had been given six weeks to live. She was not a practicing Christian but in her anger and anguish she cried out to God at a life wasted. She did not ask that God would cure her cancer, but rather give her something to do with the rest of her life and heal her soul. She was offered an opportunity to pray for a friend and at a given time she did. Little by little she developed a prayer ministry without ever leaving her bed. Little by little she was able to get up and eventually could walk again. She lived a year longer and died singing the words of David’s psalm, “O God, I called to you for help…and you healed me.”

This world is full of hurting people. Some are crying at the top of their lungs while others are screaming in the silence of their minds for a cure. But more important than a cure is the gift of healing.

I believe that the great miracle is not that some prophets or that Jesus cured people. The miracle is that they healed people. God worked through them to bring wholeness to lives that were broken, the isolated were welcomed home, the downcast were given hope.

Like the man who was healed in the Mark reading, and couldn’t keep it silent, wouldn’t it be wonderful to be truly healed, and so joyful that we couldn’t be silent either? Just like it was for Naaman, healing is possible when we invite God into our lives and then we listen for what we are called to do. Sadly, pain and suffering is part of this life but true healing is possible and it happens every day, sometimes under the strangest circumstances and in the most unexpected way.

With God as our mentor, teacher and guide may we be become instrument for healing and may we experience God’s healing in each moment of our lives. May it be so.

Isaiah 40:21-31
Psalm 147 (VU pgs. 868-869 Part 1)
Mark 1:29-39

Let us pray. God of mercy and compassion, as we hear your words of liberty and life, help us to live the message that you bring us. Open the scriptures to us and may we find in them renewal, wholeness and joy. With Christ as our strength and our shield. Amen.

Ok, I have a little quiz for you. I wonder if anyone knows where these lines come from.

Till I’m six feet under
I won’t need a bed
Gonna live while I’m alive
I’ll sleep when I’m dead
Till they roll me over
And lay my bones to rest
Gonna live while I’m alive
I’ll sleep when I’m dead

Does anyone have any idea? For those of you who listened to rock music back in the early nineties you will remember this 1992 song “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” off the album “Keep the Faith” by Bon Jovi. Now the next thing that you may be wondering is what rock lyrics from the 90’s have to do with a sermon? A rock song that probably had more to do with parties and having a carefree good time than anything serious or Christian.

Well, I would like to argue they have quite a bit to do with Christianity. Perhaps it is because as Christians we all too often believe that we must work as much as we can, for as many as we can without thinking much for ourselves. We believe that we can rest when we are dead, or when the job is done, which ever comes first. But what if the job of tending the poor, the sick, the widowed is never over? As Christians, do we feel that we deserve rest and relaxation?

At first reading, Paul in the 1st Corinthians text seems to be saying that as Christians we need to make ourselves slaves to all. That rest is for the next life, not for this one. We may also think of all the early Christian martyrs who gave their lives for the faith or of the current day missionaries who risk their lives everyday to share the gospel and live the word. We may also take our example from Jesus himself who gave the ultimate gift of his life for the good of others.

So is self-sacrifice and martyrdom the road that all Christians are called too? Over the centuries and even today, some have argued that it is. But the reality is that the life of a martyr…is a very short lived life. I have always been fascinated with self-giving. When I was younger I wondered why Jesus didn’t just stay in one place and heal as many people as possible. I never once thought that Jesus might need a break now and then from healing and helping people.

In fact, it is easy to overlook the many times in the gospels that Jesus went off into the wilderness to get away from the stress and demands of his life, just to pray.

He took retreat in the wilderness, the lake side and in gardens to be rejuvenated so that we could go about his work once again. Perhaps that is a model that each of us can learn from in our own lives. As Christians we may have to learn that rest isn’t a bad thing; that it isn’t a sign of laziness or weakness. It is a time to ground our actions in God, a time to remind ourselves why we do the things that we do for others.

When you were in kindergarten did you have a time after lunch when you would take a blanket, gather in a circle, dim the lights and rest for a while? Even playing and painting and running around the play ground is tiring. A time of rest rejuvenates us and prepares us for more kindergarten fun. So if rest does that, just think what resting in God during times of prayer and in spiritual reflection can do for us?

We hear all the time of how our world is so fast, but why does it need to be so fast? Where do we need to get in such a hurry? We hear about children who are having burn outs from too much activities and school programs. People of all ages are experiencing hyper-tension and high levels of anxiety in their lives. Stay at home moms and self-employed people are burning their candles at both ends, all in the quest to do everything that they think needs to be done. But who says when enough is enough?

Church’s are also experiencing burn out. Church members are busy doing good works, raising money to keep the building open but for what purpose? Why are so many Christians running themselves ragged?

Recently I listened to a podcast from the CBC radio series “White Cloak Black Art”, the presenter talked about doctors, nurses and health care providers who get compassion fatigue. Professionals, who can no longer be compassionate and empathetic; people who are tired of caring about other people.

You often hear about clergy burn out. Countless clergy are suffering mental health issues like depression because they constantly put the well being of their parishioners before their own.

So what are we doing all this for? Are we tired Christians?

God calls us to love and serve others but if we don’t look after ourselves we will burn out and be no good to anyone. If we don’t take time each day to remember why we care then we will loose our focus and forget why we do what we do.

This week a friend told me about a little poem that I would like to share with you, it is called, “Dust if you must.”

Dust if you must,
but wouldn’t it be better to paint a picture,
or write a letter, bake a cake, or plant a seed?
Ponder the difference between want and need.

Dust if you must, but there is not much time,
with rivers to swim and mountains to climb!
Music to hear, and books to read,
friends to cherish and life to lead.

Dust if you must,
but the world’s out there with the sun in your eyes,
the wind in your hair, a flutter of snow, a shower of rain,
this day will not come round again.

Dust if you must, but bear in mind, old age will come and it’s not kind.
And when you go, and go you must,
You, yourself,
will make more dust!

If we don’t slow down, smell the roses and ground ourselves in God, life will be over before we know it. Without God life will still have its ups and downs, but with God the road will be a little less rough on our shocks.

In a way, our lives are like a hand water pump, sometimes we need to put some water in the pump to prime it before we can get more water out. So what do you put in your life to energize you, to give you the strength to go on?

The psalmist tells us that God does not faint or grow weary. God gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless. 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 faith.

God is our strength and our refuge: our reason for loving and the reason why we stretch out our hands and hearts to those around us. So perhaps part of our call is to look after the relationship that we have with God, the relationship that we have with our Savior. That relationship will enrich our spiritual lives, our personal lives and our lives with one another. There will always be work to do. Like Mary and Martha, there is a time for work and there is a time for rest and renewal.

So if God and Jesus took breaks and times to reflect, then why shouldn’t we?

A few years ago I received as a gift a note pad, one that is magnetized and can be stuck on the fridge. It is a pad to write down the long list of things that you have planned for the day. But at the top of the note pad it says, “Things to do…after I pray.”

I have to admit, sometimes it is hard to pray first and act later but I know that if I just work on even this small thing in my life, I too won’t so easily become, a tired Christian.

Thanks be to God.

Ezekiel 37:1-14
Romans 8:24-27
Luke 2:8-20

Let us pray…God of mystery and new life, in this season of awaiting your light in the world, help us to stay strong. May your promises of newness and love sustain us now and throughout the year. May we never lose hope in the promise of the resurrection. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

This is the time of year when everyone seems to be celebrating. The malls have been celebrating since Back to School in September and kicked it up to ludicrous just after Halloween. For the last four weeks churches have been proclaiming: peace, hope, love and joy. The hymns even get in on the festivities with tunes like “Hark the Herald, Go Tell it on the Mountain” and “Joy to the World.”

But as many of us know, Christmas is not all those things for everyone. For some this time of year has them feeling more like, “Christmas? Bah humbug!”

There are all sorts of things that seem to weight heavier on us at Christmas. Things like divorce, loss of a joy, loss of independence, moving into a long-term care home or losing a loved one can leave us feeling anything but festive. The joy of the season seems like it has been drained away, syphoned off especially if the loss is new and the hurt is still raw. You might not even want to just skip putting up the lights this year or feel compelled to go about the motions of the season because that is what is expected or because the kids would want it that way.

Indeed the symbols of Advent may seem very far off at this time of year. Joy may be in competition with tears and thoughts of what could have been. Feelings of peace may seem like an impossibility, love too may seem thin and non-existent. But maybe just maybe, hope can make its way in.

Hope is something so very different than any other emotion.
Hope is expectation, longing, looking forward.
Hope is longing for something new, because things will never be the same.
Hope for a new way of living.
Hope for something good to come of what has been.

It is probably no coincidence that throughout the Bible God offered more hope than anything else. We just heard in Ezekiel the cry to God of whether these dry bones will live again.

The text is talking about a new way of living: the old will be reborn, the dead will experience resurrection. The past has occurred but something new and different will happen in the future. This passage could also refer to the hearts that are dry from so many tears being shed. God promises that those grieving hearts will feel again in time. Hurting hearts will trust in time. With time, in time, things will look and feel different.

This morning I used symbols to talk about the new life than comes from that which was thought dead and beyond hope and one of those symbols was a little green plant. The plant that I used is a piece of ivy that I took out of a flower arrangement from a funeral that occurred in this church a few months back. When you think about it, the little shoot must have been from a big healthy ivy plant, it was cut and removed from the main plant, arranged in a beautiful way and then left to wither and die. But instead, I took it, placed it in water till it sprouted its own roots, planted it in new soil, and then gave it all the water and sunlight it wanted. Then slowly, over the months it has begun to grow, bit by bit, growing toward the light.

Who knows how big it will grow. Maybe next year it will put out shoots and will crawl all over the choir room but for now it is growing one leaf at a time.

Maybe that is what Ezekiel was trying to say. Life is full of all sorts of roadblocks and dead-ends but the light of God, with the care of God, with time; things can and will turn around, take root and grow in new and perhaps unexpected ways .

For me, that is Christmas hope. Even with joy there can come the tears. New birth is happy and sad, and life keeps on going around us. Peace, love, and joy may be hard sometimes to see when the glitter of Christmas cheer is around us, but I hope that when the season brings you down, you will never let go of the true gift of the season: hope.

May we keep the light of Christ burning in our hearts and may God’s love give us the strength to go on.

May it be so.

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
Psalm 126 (VU p. 850 refrain 1)
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
John 1:6-8, 19-28

Ever present God, as we pray, as we hear your words of wisdom and truth, the words come alive to us in new ways. May the promises of hope, peace, joy and love be truly felt today and throughout the year. May we take your Christmas message with us into our community and into our families. Amen.

How many of you every had a Mom or Dad that told you, “Never, ever, under no circumstance to ever put your tongue on a piece of cold metal in the winter?” How many of you listened? You probably did it anyway.

How many of you eat an apple a day. Remember the saying, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” How many of you do it? It is such a simple thing to do and it can’t hurt and probably does a lot of good.

Now the big one….how many of you eat raw cookie dough? What just me? Well it was really shocking to learn that the scientific community has officially declared that eating chunks of raw cookie dough can not only give you an upset stomach, but it could also harbour harmful bacteria like ecoli and salmonella. In fact researchers who investigated a 2009 outbreak of foodborne illness in the United States have declared that the outbreak was directly linked to the eating of raw cookie dough.

Mom’s and Dad’s the world over are always prone to being overprotective. It doesn’t matter what age you are but a parent is always a parent when they start a sentence with, “You know, you really shouldn’t do that.” This behaviour is probably made all the more unbearable since history and now science, seems to be teaching us more and more that parents are actually right sometimes! (I am being sarcastic) In fact, an argument could be made that parents have a lot in common with prophets. Prophets like Isaiah and John the Baptist were a lot like over protective and corrective parents.

Since time began the job of parents, and prophet, the world over, was to look around and to say what he or she saw and what needed to be changed. Prophets, called the people to account for what they had done, what they were doing and what needed to be changed to avoid catastrophe. They often used scare tactics, threatened fire and brimstone, and employed such phrases as, “You wait till your Father gets home.” They were prophetic. And usually like John they looked frightening as well. Not unlike my Aunt Ruby in her curlers, blue facial peel mask and her twenty year old bathrobe. Prophets went around saying, “You should do this and you should do that.” Now no one likes to be “should-on”. Well do they?! Prophets whether it was in biblical times, in our homes’ across the dinner table staring us in the face or on the TV, tell it like it is. And telling the truth can make people feel uncomfortable.

But there is no denying that the words of the prophets are just as relevant now as they were then. The world is in trouble, the climate is upside down, our lives are not making sense like they used to, and the good seem to suffer more than the wicked. The world has always needed those who point toward the light.

John the Baptist said that he was not a prophet to say what was wrong, but to say that something that would set things in the world right was coming. Jesus was the new Moses, not that he would lead them out of slavery in Egypt, but out of the slavery of Caesar. The slavery that comes from believing that what we see in the world is all there is. Jesus was the window through which the cure for this world would shine. And that cure was love, acceptance and grace.

This past week on CBC radio program called Shift, they had a program on being poor in Canada. They interviewed people and there was one woman who’s story impacted so many that the hosts had her back on the show to do another interview. The women being interviewed said that she was embarrassed to be poor. She had had a good job, and at one point she had cut back on hours to help her ill mother however soon after she had become ill as well. She was forced to go on disability. In tears the woman lamented that all she wanted was to be a contributing member of society but her health wouldn’t allow her to do that. She felt less of a person because people treated her differently.

At the end of the program, the host said that poverty is complicated. Often times it is related to things like addiction or mental health issues and more often than not it is based on policy. The host continues by saying that, “it was important to donate money to organizations to help people with the basic necessities but that that kind of help was going to bring about true justice for those in need. That kind of help was going to hurt.

Well giving does hurt. It hurts in the places that matter the most: our wallets, our time and most of all, our hearts. It hurts in our hearts because we realize that our neighbour in trouble could so easily be our mother, our father, our son, daughter or even ourselves.

Outreach to those beyond the walls of our church, beyond the walls of our family is difficult. But like the Baptist, or Isaiah, the prophets of old would say that is what God is calling us to do. Prophets exist in churches, politics, in the scientific community and in our homes. It is our duty to listen and to judge the truth of what they say and then to act.

Some would argue that the church shouldn’t be involved in politics but a prophet would say where the needs of God’s people are, that is where the church needs to be.

It may seem that the dark side is often winning in this world, for every step forward there seems to be another step back, but to borrow from the Star Wars movies, the empire of Caesar, the empire of wealth for the one percent, the empire that says that people get what they deserve, always “Empire Strikes Back”, but with the “Return of the Jedi”, I mean Jesus, may we find ways of bringing the true meaning of Christmas to all parts of our village, our city and our country.

Thanks be to God and may it be so.

Isaiah 40:1-11
Psalm 85:1–2, 8–13 (VU p. 802)
2 Peter 3:8–15a
Mark 1:1-8

Almighty God, help us to understand that no matter how much we try to put you into words, we will always fail. That no matter how much dogma we come up with, you will always prove to be bigger than the box we put you in. May our minds be open to ponder your greatness, and our hearts always open to feel the love that your Spirit gives. With Jesus as our guide for living and loving. Amen.

Scandal. Today I want to talk about scandal. Scandal is what I hoped you would think when you first read what the sermon title was for today. Maybe you were thinking, “What blasphemy am I going to hear today?” Would the whole village be talking about it by Tuesday, or isn’t she a bit on the liberal side of things?

But perhaps some of you also thought, “I have always had questions about the Christmas story. I read something about them in my intro to World Religions in University and I was always interested… but was afraid to ask.”

Well, what I am about to share in this short sermon is not just what I have to say about this issue or what many biblical scholars think, nor is just left leaning Liberal thinkers nor is it just ministers that went to Queen’. What I am about to say is not new, and it is not meant to shake your faith. Perhaps it can enrich it, give you a different way of approaching your belief. This way of reading the Bible critically is faith engaging your heart and your head. It is not new but it is rarely preached from pulpits.

Today is about sharing with you some ideas that are believed by faithful scholars the world over and its view is very much in line with generations of United Church folks. This is just a taste, but I hope that if you are interested, you will explore it further, mull it over and remember… you don’t have to believe anything that I offer today for consideration.

At the end of this short sermon, I will try and bring the pieces together in a way that make sense for what the original writers of the gospels were trying to accomplish.

So let’s begin…

Only two of the gospels have a nativity story: those being Matthew and Luke and both of them disagree on some key points. In Matthew’s Nativity, the angelic message that Mary will have a baby, known as the Annunciation, is made to Joseph while Luke’s is to Mary. Matthew offers wise men and a star and puts the baby Jesus in a house; Luke’s preferred shepherd and a manger.

It has been argued that the writer of Luke was probably a Gentile, a pagan, non-Jewish, rather than a convert to Christianity from Judaism. The writer of Luke wrote in fine Greek for other non-Jews and so used references they were familiar with. While Matthew borrowed heavily from Jewish prophets and symbols.

Another thing to keep in mind is the gospel of Matthew was written around 60 AD and Luke 70 to 80 years after the birth of Jesus.

Probably one of the biggest arguments is whether Mary was a Virgin. Whether she stayed a Virgin after the birth is a whole other topic for another sermon. Scholars point out even when the virgin birth was first written about, fellow Jews challenged Matthews’s gospel assertion that it fulfilled a prophecy in the book of Isaiah that the Messiah would be born of a virgin. Isaiah’s Hebrew actually talks of a “young girl”; Matthew was probably working from a mistranslation. The dogma surrounding the divine conception only become important and heavily argued long after the event, in the second century.

Other scholars point out that the theme of virgin births was probably borrowed from the literature of the non-Jewish world. For example not only mythic heroes like Perseus and Romulus and Remus but also real people like Plato, Alexander the Great and Augustus.

The birth of Mithra and the birth of Zoroaster, the main figures of two other large religions were also described as being divinely conceived. There is also the story that on the night the Buddha was conceived, his mother Queen Maya dreamt that a white elephant with six white tusks entered her right side. In many cultures if a person led a great life, they surely must have had an equally magnificent conception and birth story.

By Matthew’s account, Joseph and Mary are Bethlehem residents and Jesus is born at home. But his birth means that they must flee into Egypt and eventually Nazareth. In Luke, Joseph and Mary, are Nazarenes, and are on brief visit to Joseph’s ancestral home of Bethlehem because of a census. To add to the mix, in Mark’s gospel calls Nazareth Jesus’ home town. Confusing right?

The star rising in the east is a beautiful feature of the story but there is no record of such an astronomical occurrence such as this. But a star was said to have heralded the birth of Alexander the Great, Julius and Augustus Caesar and even King Herod.

What about the date of December 25th for Jesus’ day? The early Christian church did not celebrate Jesus’ birth. It wasn’t until A.D. 440 that the church officially proclaimed December 25 as the birth of Christ. This was not based on any religious evidence but on a pagan feast. Saturnalia was a tradition inherited by the Roman pagans from an earlier Babylonian priesthood. December 25 was used as a celebration of the birthday of the sun god which was at the time of the the winter solstice.

And what about the Those Three Wise Men? Well when you think about it, having Three Magi come from the East is symbolic that this new message, this Good News being born, is no longer just for one group. The good news is for everybody. It is also foreshadows other gospels stories later that have the outside ,the foreigner knowing and naming who Jesus is before his own disciples have even figured it out.

So this all comes back to: fact versus fiction, myth versus reality, truth vs. falseness.

Well, the earliest gospel which is Mark and the last written one of John don’t have birth stories and maybe they are one to something. They don’t need to know where he came from because they knew where he went and what Jesus did. The gospel writers were trying to build up the faith of those who heard the good news. They were trying to describe absolute truth in the symbols and phrases that people of the day understood.

A lot can be up for debate but I always hang on to the point that after Jesus arose from the dead something amazing transformed so many lives. His disciples went out and preached. Paul had a vision and went about setting up churches all over the middle-East. Those closest to Jesus had to make sense of what had happened to them and how they described it was in the ways that they knew, the symbols and stories they knew. By incorporating them into Jesus life they were saying, “Look, Jesus is just like Apollo, just like Zoroaster’s amazing birth. But you know what? He is even better.”

With that perspective December 25 makes sense as Jesus’ birth since it is the shortest day of the year. So having the new light of the world being born on the darkest night is a powerful symbol.

Scholars disagree on many points but what they agree on is that the gospel writers wrote the way they did to make sense of what had happened to them in light of their past history. The Israelites expected a Messiah, a leader, a King, one from the line of King David, the last King, to lead them out of bondage once again.

What showed up in the person of Jesus went far beyond anyone’s expectation or hope. In modern terms you could say that the gospels writers took the ideals and the expectations of the past and the present and super-sized them.

So as we get closer to Christmas and we see those shows on TV or articles in the paper about the events surrounding Jesus birth, you don’t have feel bad for thinking about them or worrying that they don’t match what you learned in Sunday school. You can even agree with the people who don’t celebrate Christmas because they say it is pagan, because you know what?

I think the writers of the gospels and early church leaders knew what they were doing. They knew that through the symbol of light, the truth of the Christmas moment would shine through. So celebrate Christmas and know that literalism was not what they intended, truth and love goes beyond all the words that we could ever build up around our Creator and Lord. God will always get around our little words.

Thanks be to God.

Isaiah 64:1-9
Psalm 80
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:24-37

God of Hope, we begin our Advent waiting time today knowing that you are with us every moment. In every task we do, in every breath we take, your love is with us, yesterday, today and always. We thank you, God. Amen.

Every year a very predictable part of the season will begin. It is not the endless Musac pumped into the stores, or the Christmas trees that went on sale at Costco during back to school. Oh no. The thing that will make its way onto our morning newspapers, magazines and the Discovery Channel is the discussion of whether Jesus was born in a manager, on December 25th? There will be questions of whether there was a star, shepherds and Magi from the East? Every year the secular world seems to become enthralled with the Christmas story. So what I will be attempting over this Advent season is to provide some food for thought and perhaps more importantly to encourage you to ask what you believe and what your belief, might mean for you and for the world.

So during the season of Advent, a time of waiting, we could ask ourselves what does the Christmas story mean? What truths are buried deep in it? When I talk about truth I don’t mean the literal truth, but what wisdom is woven into the story? What is the story saying about what being human is all about. So we begin with the story about a special baby being born. We usually talk a lot about Mary and Joseph but how often do we ask what this story says about God? Many people quote John 3:16 “that God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever should believe in him should may not perish but have eternal life” but to get at the heart of what this means we have to go back to the moment in the story when God decided to send Gabriel to earth with a message.

God decided to gift his son onto a young, unmarried girl. A baby is the most vulnerable thing in the world. A baby needs someone to feed it, to change its diaper, it needs someone to wash it and to keep it from harm. God trusted a family to raise this very special person. It was a big responsibility. But perhaps most importantly, God entrusted us, humanity with the big job of raising the son of God. Talk about pressure on a parent! God entrusted us, with a very important part to play in the unfolding of God’s kingdom. We are co-architects with the Divine. When put in that perspective, Christmas means that we all become midwives to a birthing of something great in the world.

Those holy moments come in the most unlikely of places. I remember one day when I was on placement at Center 507. Each day people would stream through the center’s doors. Each person that walked through the door had a story. But each one came there for something different. Some came for toothpaste, clean socks, clean needles, a hot meal or a conversation with a trusted staff person. Some came to make use of the life skills seminars being offered. And some came for a free hair cut.

I will never forget the sight of a man who lived on the streets, checking his freshly cut hair in a hall mirror. His clothes were frayed around the edges, his teeth badly decayed from using crack cocaine, but he had an aura of pride around him. Perhaps a bit of his former self peaking out from behind the cloud he now lived under. Something that many of us would take for granted gave this man a new outlook on life. Hope and newness came on the sharp edge of pair of scissors.

Hope doesn’t have to cost alot, or take a lot of time but sometimes small things can make a difference. That is what the baby offered us two thousand years ago and what Christmas offers us today. Hope and transformation can come about in the simplest of ways. If we but look and accept what God is offering us. When we hear Jesus telling us to, “Stay awake. Keep alert.” He is inviting us with a hopeful call to be mindful of God in our midst. Similar to the way a parent sleeps lightly when a baby is in the house. God is in this moment in all its complexity. “Stay awake” is like saying “be open to God’s call in this moment.” Or the Latin phase, “Carpe diem! Don’t let this day, or the moment, pass you by.”

I am reminded of a story that I read about a pastor who was invited to an AA awards night and Christmas dinner. People shared their stories. Jill told the pastor that “I prayed that God would just break in and change everything.”

“Our town was a mess. My family was a mess. My life was a mess.” “You remember when the mill closed here? The drinkers drank more and people like me started,” she continued.

“The money problems got worse. There were fights. People neglected their kids. “One day, I came to with a bad headache, but I suddenly saw the clear stark reality: the kids were dirty and hungry. Here I’m wasting what little I have avoiding reality, and my kids are hungry,’ I cried. But I found there was help.”

Jill had been a solid, worshipful woman until her marriage. Jill admitted she had hammered at the gates of heaven from the time she heard the mill would likely close, until it did.

“Save us, Lord; rescue us; shake up those company shareholders!” She shouted like an old time prophet. Then she figured God either didn’t exist or didn’t care, and she started drinking.

Jill says it was God who led her out of the haze of alcohol; there was no one else to do it. And it was the Bible lessons and sermons that lingered with her that convinced her she didn’t need to live the way she was. There was another way. Jill still needed help.

She found the local AA group meeting in the church two blocks from her house. Ten years later, Jill has moved to a new community, but still attends AA. There was job retraining available and people at the church offered child care so she could do it.

She says, “When the mill closed, I was too proud to go to the food bank. That wasn’t the best choice; false pride I guess. Would have been better if I’d turned my pride to keeping my kids fed and clean and myself godly.”

Jill smiled, “Pastor, the heavens didn’t rip open, but truly God came to me, changed everything. I still have lots of challenges—show me anybody with teenagers who doesn’t—but God’s helped me before and will help me again.”

Sometimes it is hard to see God in the midst of despair. God may seem hidden but God never abandons us. But will we follow him, will we let him in when we don’t like what Jesus has to tell us? Jesus is a hard guy to follow. Will we let him in if Jesus is like a beggar who is loud, drunk and stumbling around the back of the church? Disrupting our nice, peaceful service? Will we let him in even if he is a cantankerous, older person? Someone who is hard to love?

When I think about all these things, I think that God was very wise when God choose to come down in the shape of a baby. In scripture God didn’t appear as a full grown person. Instead just like Jesus slowly grew up, our faiths too have a chance to grow. Jesus’ influence grows in our life a little at the time until he is part of us. Each year Advent gives us the fresh hope of a new born baby. A baby that needs us to look after him until the day comes when he looks after us.

Each of us are like the people that I met at that drop in center with all their brokenness. Each of us too has problems, addictions, we at times feel alone betrayed, perhaps ashamed of something we have done, and yet God welcomes each of us. Offering us hope, a rest from the struggles that each day brings. When we open ourselves up to one another, we let Jesus into our lives. It’s hard, it takes trust and time but God is always there to offer us hope when all else seems dark and beyond repair.

So what does a baby plus a manger mean? That depends upon your theology, but it could mean that our Heavenly Father adopted us even before we realized that we needed a Parent’s love and care.

Thanks be to God.

“For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon
his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
-Isaiah 9:6 NRSV

As I type this letter to you, Eastern Ontario has just experienced its first major snow fall of the year. The roads are quiet, the squirrels seem to have taken a break from their frantic search for anything edible and the grass and leaves that had not been raked up, are now covered with a blanket of clean, blemish free snow. Back in my retail days this was the kind of weather we prayed for. Snow meant shoppers were put in the festive mood. Snow meant the corridors of the malls would be filled with bustling people with list in hand, hurrying on to the next item on their list. But as I ponder what Advent means for me this year, I wonder how I will keep the season in my spirit. Will I read a book, listen to music, or bake some cookies? But packed around these activities there will be also be professional and personal lists of things to do in the coming weeks. I have to confess that it will not be easy to keep the Christ child in front of me at all times.

Perhaps with all the meals that need to be prepared, the cards addressed, and stamps licked, the best thing that we can do is to take some time each day to remember why we mark Christmas the way we do. It’s not because the empire of commercialism says so, not because our parents did it and we should too, not because everyone else is doing it, but because the deeper meaning of love, sharing and celebrating is what is at the heart of the Christmas story. The baby born thousands of years ago symbolized that God had entered into this world in a very different way. The way of Jesus would be of joy, love, sharing and celebrating. Jesus’ Way is one of hope and freedom. So maybe this year, as we go about our traditions, and our customs that we have always done, perhaps we could remember that Jesus is celebrating with us and that Jesus is the honoured guest at our feast. That the reason why we share with others at this time of year, perhaps more than at any other, is that God shared the ultimate gift with us, Himself. Surely that is reason enough to celebrate.

May the wonder of the shepherds,
the generosity of the wise men
and the compassion of Mary,
be in us and flow from us,
this Christmas and always.

Rev. Carla Van Delen
St. Paul’s United Church, Richmond, Ontario

Joshua 24:1–3a, 14–25
Psalm 78:1–7 (VU p. 792, Part One)
1 Thessalonians 4:13–18
Matthew 25:1–13

Merciful God, break open our hearts today. May the cracks in our heart allow your Spirit to enter and change what it is there. Be gentle with us O God, but more importantly teach us how to dream even when we are wide awake. Amen.

In 1971 John Lennon released a song that today is deemed one of the 500 most important songs ever written. The title of that song was “Imagine.” It could be argued that it was an anthem of sorts for a time and for a group of people. The Vietnam War was still raging. The world seemed to be turned upside down. The age of TV meant that this was the first war that had wide media coverage. Heart stopping pictures were broadcast into our living rooms all in vivid colour. For the first time in history, it wouldn’t be weeks or months before people saw what was raging on the battlefield, it would be days and hours. Unfortunately, the frustration that the people felt back home was taken out on the government but more hurtfully it was laid at the feet of those coming back from the frontline, just as it is today. War has a way of taking young, innocent boys and transforming them into hardened men and women. If those service men and women don’t come back with broken bodies often times their psyches have been crushed into the mud of a foreign land.

Lennon’s song began with the words…

Imagine there’s no Heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

Some saw Lennon as a messianic figure, a hippy, an out of touch prophet who would rather stuff flowers in the barrels of the guns of those threatening to harm American interests than fight for those precious ideals. Someone who didn’t really get what the world was all about.

Lennon echoes Jesus’s message when he goes on to say…

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Lennon was a dreamer. Behind him and before him, in the generations following this song men and women continue to serve their country. Men and women continue to give up their lives for reasons that are far too complicated to cover in this short sermon. It is sufficient to say that those who serve must believe in peace and hope, the optimism that Lennon sang about. For if they didn’t believe that their actions could make the world a better place, then why serve at all? Why risk so much if there is no hope for a brighter, freer tomorrow? And that hope, that belief needs to be remembered, it needs to be celebrated each and every year.

I found this video on Youtube. It is called Remembrance Day Video 2011: Exclusive WWII Footage.

The next stanza of Lennon’s song calls on us to

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

Today we are called upon to remember because the world is becoming a smaller place. The seventh billionth person was born this week and as food, oil and water become more valuable than gold, we need to remind ourselves of the sacrifice that will be required if we don’t find ways of sharing this world.

Lennon ends his song with the chorus repeated,

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

To dream takes courage, to believe takes faith and to serve that dream sometimes…sometimes takes sacrifice. May we never forget those who imagined a better world, those who imagined a better life for all, those who sacrificed for the love of his neighbor, because the world needs dreamers. May we continue to imagine, to dream with God about the possibilities that come with believing in hope, freedom and equality.

May it be so. Thanks be to God.