Luke 1: 26-38 - December 15, 2024 - Advent III

 The word “angel” can evoke a wide range of responses.  For some folks, the visits of angels, exactly as described in the Bible align nicely with their experiences and beliefs, of angels or guardian angels, giving them specific guidance and safety at key points in their lives.  For others, all this talk of angels is the stuff of fantasy, literary devices invented by ancient authors to make sense of stories that otherwise would not make sense at all.  I think many of us end up somewhere in between: perhaps no visions of Angels, but we can name one or more times when we received specific saving kindness from another person that was unmistakably “angelic.”

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church says that Angels played a “comparatively peripheral role” in most people’s devotional practices in the earliest days of Christianity, but by 500 years later there came to be a structured, even bureaucratic understanding of nine categories of angels and archangels, three hierarchies of three, some closer to God, some closer to earth.

To me, the presence of angels brings to mind the notion within Celtic spirituality of “thin places.” Irish travel blogger Mindi Burgoyne writes, “Thin places are places of energy, a place where the veil between this world and the eternal world is thin. A thin place is where one can walk in [these] two worlds – the worlds are fused together, knitted loosely where the differences can be discerned or tightly where the two worlds become one”.  She continues, writing “Truth abides in thin places; naked, raw, hard to face truth… [a place where] the human spirit is awakened, we gain connection and become part of something larger than we can perceive.”

When I read a scriptural encounter between a person and an angel, I envision the two of them inhabiting a thin place. Whether you believe in angels as heavenly messengers who span that distance between heaven and earth to deliver a word of wisdom or safety from God, or see them as a metaphor for the way that God guides us away from things that would place us in great peril, is up to you – and it’s also okay if the whole notion of angels is outside your beliefs.  As for me, my personal theology would not change a whole lot if one were able to prove either the existence or non-existence of angels, yet this I do believe: I believe that there is a God, who is personally linked to us by the transformative power of everlasting, boundless and unconditional love, and I believe that God uses various ways and means to speak to us and listen to us.  Prayer, meditation, dreams, writings and songs and poems and visions, can convey the urgings of our loving God.  So can acts of kindness by complete strangers…new revelations sometimes gentle, sometimes courageous, seemingly coming from nowhere…moments in which the presence of the risen Christ feels especially real. 

In the presence of angels, however understood, abides a sense deep in your bones that you matter, that you have a place in this big, amazing universe.  All of these are, to me, what I would call the work of angels, pathways by God communicates with us (and vice versa).  And when we are in times and places where the separation between us and heaven feels particularly thin, the language of angels, physical or metaphorical, can help us feel God’s holy embrace.  

Our gospel reading this morning from Luke described a very thin-place encounter between Mary and the angel Gabriel in which Mary is presented with an outrageous and impossible plan for her life: she is to bear, nurse and nurture the Messiah.  In a beautiful piece of prose, there is a rhythmic and dynamic exchange between Mary and this old Angel, who seemingly had been active since at least the time of the prophet Daniel, some 600 years earlier.  The Angel is polite yet insistent, while Mary is troubled, then curious, then open to whatever it is that God has in mind.

No fewer than five times, Angels make an appearance in the nativity stories.

1.     In addition to Mary’s encounter with Gabriel,

2.     In the first chapter of Luke, fifteen verses and six months earlier, the angel Gabriel, makes another appearance.  This encounter was with a priest named Zechariah, with the angel informing the priest that his wife Elisabeth will give birth to a child, and they are to name him John.  As Shannon mentioned last Sunday, we then see what happens when Zechariah tries to mansplain to the Angel that this couldn’t possibly happen: the Angel pauses, looks at Zechariah, and takes away his voice until the baby is safely born and dedicated!

3.     In a scene well-known to us from the 2^nd chapter of Luke, on the night of Jesus’ birth an angel appears to the shepherds.  In the words of the King James Version, even though the angel is telling them to be not afraid, “they were sore afraid” and in most modern translations this gets rendered, “they were terrified!”  When the angel was joined by “a multitude of the heavenly host” the shepherds may have initially become even more afraid, but eventually their sense of awe in the moment and their trust in these thin-space messengers urged them to go to the manger, and from there to become the first heralds of the good news of the birth of a special child in Bethlehem.  

4.     In Matthew 1, an angel of the Lord appears to Joseph, informing him that Mary is pregnant, and urging Joseph to remain in relationship with her and be a father to the child.

5.     And one chapter later, once Jesus is born, this Angel of the Lord appears to Joseph once more, warning him that the child is at risk due to the murderous rage of King Herod, and Mary and Jesus are to be taken to safety in Egypt.  Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, in their wonderful little book about the First Christmas, describe this as Matthew’s literary attempt to align the life and purpose of Jesus with the life and purpose of Moses: both needed to be hidden from the rage of the King, both would bring deliverance to their people.

In all of these stories, the presence of the angel ensures that the characters in the story understand the unusual and specific ways that God’s immense love will touch their lives.  Elisabeth had given up on ever having a child, yet here was John, born to herald the Messiah.  Mary, from the eyes of Luke’s gospel, did not yet have any reason to think about having a child, and yet here was Jesus.   Shepherds were appointed to be witnesses and messengers, Joseph the builder was appointed to help shape the life of the Christ child, the holy family was sent to safety: all of these were indicators of God’s involvement in their lives. 

And what about in your life?  Are there holy moments you can recall when God, directly or indirectly, showed evidence of how deeply loved and cared for you are?  Are there unexplained moments, when an act of grace or kindness by a stranger or acquaintance has overwhelmed you?  In your life’s story, are there thin space encounters, when your course of action became clear, when things suddenly made sense, when you knew that you were in the presence of the holy?  These big stories of angels in the gospel stories can potentially help us recognize times in our lives when God has reached in: to bless us with wisdom, to steer us with guidance, to lift us out of prolonged sorrow, to touch us with love.  

In a few minutes, we will engage angels in a different and very physical manner, as we place angel ornaments on the tree in honour of loved ones we miss at Christmas.  I suspect that this, too, will be a time when the distance between us and God is very, very thin, and the love that God shines on us is very, very bright.  Just as the angels in the Bible stories carried love messages from God to humans, so the angels we place on the tree will speak of love experienced and gratefully remembered.

May the wonders of these stories, and God’s great desire to be in relationship with you and with all the world, bless you this day and always.  Amen.

References cited and consulted:

Borg, Marcus J. and Crossan, John Dominic. The First Christmas: what the gospels really teach about Jesus’ birth.  NYC: HarperOne, 2007.

Burgoyne, Mindy. https://thinplacestour.com/what-are-thin-places/

Hallowell, Billy. https://www.pureflix.com/insider/christmas-angels-the-powerful-role-of-angels-in-the-nativity-story

Livingstone, E.A. (editor) The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church.  London, UK: Oxford University Press, 1977.

O’Donohue, John. To Bless the space between us: a book of blessings. NYC: Doubleday, 2008.

Schmidt, Donald. Birth of Jesus for Progressive Christians.  Kelowna: Wood Lake, 2019.

© 2024 Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge

 

Luke 3: 2-6, 15-18 - December 8, 2024 - Advent II

My relationship with pop culture falls somewhere between shaky, dated and non-existent. It wasn’t always so. As a kid who watched way too much TV and listened to lots of radio, I grew up as a child of my era, well aware of social trends, celebrities, and other things of no significance.  But it didn’t take long before that grasp of trendiness started to slip away, especially when I twigged to how much being trendy was tied to consumerism.

When our kids became young adults and moved away from home, my last connection with pop culture left with them. So if you show me a picture of, say, Kim Kardashian, I can tell you her name within three or four guesses but I have no real idea why she’s well known.  
I’m pretty well versed on the hits of Joni Mitchell
but as for Taylor Swift, well, of course I know who she is and that she ends her world tour today in Vancouver, but would be hard pressed to name even one of her songs. Some of this due to a tired, aging memory, but it’s also because I lost my pop-culture connection and didn’t have enough personal reason to rebuild it.

Each Advent, when John the Baptizer comes roaring back onto the scene, I am conflicted because he feels like an iconic pop-culture figure from a milieu I do not understand. His call to repentance and his preparatory work for the Messiah are so clear, and are still so deeply needed, yet when I picture his weirdness and wildness I have no idea what to make of him. Outrageous John is to me like a Reality TV personality from shows I don’t watch, a TikTok creator of content I’ll never watch, or a social media influencer from an world I don’t really understand.  What I do know about him, from the gospels, is this:  

• ·       John the Baptist was a relative of Jesus of Nazareth, as their moms, Elizabeth and Mary were kin whose pregnancies had a profound divine element;
• ·       He was, from the womb, understood as the one to prepare the way for the Messiah;
• ·       He looked and sounded like a wild man: a coat of camel’s hair, a leather belt around his waist, a diet of locusts and wild honey, pacing the shores of the River Jordan, thundering his disapproval of the religious establishment;
• ·        I know that John had disciples, some of whom became disciples of Jesus;
• ·       He had people come from as far away as Jerusalem, some 70 km away, to confess their sins and be baptized, and Jesus was among those baptized by him;
• ·       and we know that his harsh, uncompromising ways, and his popularity, which may well have exceeded that of Jesus, eventually got him imprisoned and killed.

So, what to do with John the Baptist/Baptizer?  Loud, brash, weird, and right on point with his critique of his day, and ours. My hunch is that in our day, he would be all over social media, people lined up to be baptized by him all having their smartphones along and posting selfies to their favourite platform.  And just like it was 2000 years ago, I sense that the powers that be, threatened by his words of truth, would put an end to him.

If we understand peace as a stress-free state of being where everything’s nice and chill, it seems odd to be talking about John the Baptist on the Sunday of Peace.  However, peace – the broad and beautiful Jewish concept of shalom - is so much more than that.  Shalom, as defined by Jewish journalist Susan Perlman, is about peace but also wholeness, completeness, soundness, health, safety and wide-spread, available prosperity.. Rundle Memorial United Church in Banff had a tradition of lighting a peace candle each Sunday, using these words to express the breadth of what peace is all about: “Peace is not merely the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice. Peace is what happens when those who have much do not have too much, and those who have little do not have too little, when the very old and the very young are safe and secure, parents can feed their children and themselves, and all have the opportunity for meaningful work in their community. Let us pray and work for this kind of peace”.

In order for there to be peace, there needs to be justice.  In order for there to be justice, there needs to be a desire for equity, a levelling out of wealth and resources, likely with some overbalance in order to get there, a removal of all manner of barriers so that there is fair opportunity for everyone to experience shalom. Such peace, justice and equity will come only if the systems change, systems that continually fill the pockets and bellies of those who have more than enough while others go empty, away.  This is no small thing, and John the Baptist let us know the cosmic scale for such levelling to occur.  Luke sees in this the words of the prophet Isaiah 40:3-5 which said,  

“In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 
⁴ Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.
⁵ And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together.
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

If there was ever a place that could picture such a transformation, it’s here in the south Okanagan, where the highway running through desert landscapes is anything but straight, a place with valleys, mountains and hills, places both rough and rugged.  Isaiah and then John the Baptizer, quoting Isaiah, use this powerful metaphor of transformation to describe the coming realm of the Messiah. Interpreting this through a Christian lens, we understand this as the unfolding of the Kingdom or Kin-dom of God.  The bigness of the metaphor – mountains levelled, valleys filled – make clear that this is not just a tweaking of the way things are, or something done by human hands; the way God intends is drastically different from what is now.  And as with our musings on hope last Sunday, this yearning for peace founded in justice is not just wishful thinking of a world that will never be; it is a belief, a full-bodied yearning, that God’s heart for Shalom can and will become the heart of the world.   

John the Baptizer shares this vision, and then launches into the sharp realities of the work ahead.  Yes, the establishment of the Kin-Dom of God is something God will enact but that does not leave us as mere spectators - the spadework of peacemaking is done at the human level.  When a state of war is replaced by the kind of peace treaty that truly addresses the needs of the disadvantaged, the work of peacemaking is being done. When gender-based violence and discrimination is named as sin, when government policies targeting girls and women and the 2SLGBTQIA+ community are overturned, the work of peacebuilding is being done.  When the pervasive suspicion that limit the lives of people of colour is named and addressed, room is made for peace and justice to emerge.  When the countless barriers, visible and invisible that are faced by people with disabilities are identified, awareness heightened, and solutions not just named but funded, the work of peace and justice moves forward. 

And as John so bluntly points out, preparing for the arrival or advent of this new realm requires repentance, a desire to end current behaviours.  To repent is, literally, to “turn around”, to recognize that something is not serving a good purpose, name it, and commit to ways that are life-giving.  New Testament Professor Warren Carter writes, “By repenting, people prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths straight. To repent signifies, then, not only specific changes in structures and ways of living, but a basic receptivity to God's purposes”.  As Church, some of the most important work that we do in opening ourselves to God’s purposes, both as a denomination and as congregations, is to recognize ways that do not serve God’s call to peace and justice, to turn away from those things and, where others have been harmed or isolated, engage in forms of reconciliation – some of which may have costs to them.  We prepare the way for the transformative peace of Christ by cultivating habits of peace, justice, and active love in our individual lives, in the ways of this community of faith, in how we are in the world around us.

Earlier in today’s message, I wondered aloud where John the Baptist might fit in the pop culture of today.  I even went so far as to ask my good friend, Professor Google, whether others thought that John the Baptist would be a “social media influencer” if he were here today, that is, someone who would connect with people, communicate with them, and attempt through that connection to influence them in positive ways.  (i.e., not just someone who makes repeated ill-informed comments online).  In general, the voices I read online suggested John would indeed be an influencer  While I cannot for the life of me picture John the Baptist owning any device that would get him online, he certainly understood how to capture people’s attention, a key skill in the world of influencing, then he pushed them to do three things: repent of their current ways, open themselves to God’s new ways, and then give themselves to the ways of Jesus.  Unlike the kind of self-serving celebrity whose only goal is to build themselves up, John understood that his entire purpose was to get people ready for the path that Jesus would walk with them.  John caught peoples’ attention, confronted them with how they needed to change, signified this new life through the waters of baptism, and pointed them to his cousin Jesus, the very embodiment of shalom. #JohntheBaptist would have had lots of followers, but his ultimate goal was to point them to peace, justice, and Jesus.

And so, inspired by John’s call to repentance and his image from the prophet Isaiah of a new day, we yearn for a peace founded in justice, we commit ourselves to change, we pray as individuals and as Church that the path of Jesus will be our path as well.  In the name of the Holy One who brings life for all who wander and suffer and carry heavy burdens, may the sharp words of John the Baptist catch our attention and lead us to the life and light and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

References cited or consulted:

Carter, Warren. Matthew and the margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading. Cited in https://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt3x1.htm

Coursera. “What is a social media influencer? And how to become one.” https://www.coursera.org/articles/social-media-influencer

Dabbs, Matt. “John the Baptist would have made a horrible social media influencer”. https://mattdabbs.com/2022/08/18/john-the-baptist-would-have-made-a-horrible-social-media-influencer/

Perlman, Susan. https://inheritmag.com/articles/what-is-shalom-the-true-meaning

Reaoch, Stacey.  “The Social Media Strategy of John the Baptist.”  https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-social-media-strategy-of-john-the-baptist/

Schwartz, Quinn.  “The History of Influencer Marketing.”
https://grin.co/blog/the-history-of-influencer-marketing/#:~:text=Although%20influencer%20marketing%20has%20technically,prominence%20in%20the%20early%202010s.

© 2024 Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge

1 Thessalonians 3: 9-13 - December 1, 2024 - Advent I

For several decades now, the themes of Hope, Peace, Love and Joy have been connected to the four Sundays of Advent.  I find it rather odd, then, that not one of the four lectionary readings for this Sunday of Hope (Jeremiah 33, Psalm 25, Luke 21, 1 Thessalonians 3) actually included the word “hope”!  Yet there was something about this little reading from 1^st Thessalonians, a letter written by the Apostle Paul, that drew me to it.  

Thessalonica was and is a Greek city about 500 km north of Athens, and Paul had a close relationship with the house Churches there.  He had lived and preached in Thessalonica only three weeks, but the response was tremendous, with both Jews and Gentiles enlivened by the good news of Jesus Christ.  There was also a local group there that was dead set against Paul and his teachings, so much so that they followed him to other towns to oppose him after he left Thessalonica. This combination of the rapid response of the people, and their resilience in the face of fierce and committed opposition, endeared this Church to the Apostle.

He had his worries for them – some members of the congregation were so convinced that the return of Christ was going to happen immediately, that they quit work and avoided any type of sin so they would be blameless when the Lord returned, and Paul needed to snap them out of that behaviour.  Still, he loved them deeply.

In the first chapter of 1^st Thessalonians Paul wrote, “² We always thank God for you all and always mention you in our prayers. ³ For we remember before our God and Father how you put your faith into practice, how your love made you work so hard, and how your hope in our Lord Jesus Christ is firm…  ⁶ Even though you suffered much, you received the message with the joy that comes from the Holy Spirit”.   One chapter later, he wrote (2:19-20) ¹⁹ “it is you…who are our hope, our joy, and our reason for boasting of our victory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes. ²⁰ Indeed, you are our pride and our joy!”

Imagining yourself in one of the house churches in Thessalonica, can you imagine receiving praise like that?  Clearly, there was something about them that touched Paul’s heart. Their faith in the risen Christ and their group’s ability to be energized by love even when things were tough, humbled and encouraged the Apostle when his own faith and energy flagged.  I hunch he was also impressed by their ability to receive correction when they got carried away with their zeal.

On this Sunday of Hope, it’s important for me to start with this beautiful connection between Paul and the Thessalonian Church, but not to end there.  For this combination Paul saw in them of faith in Christ and a sturdy love that was so resilient in times of trial is something that keeps showing up throughout history.  And that’s a very good thing, for there’s no shortage of things to worry about in our day and age, from a particularly nasty group of egotistical world leaders to ongoing eco-anxiety about the fate of this planet.  We need honest words of hope that will go beyond mere platitudes, and remain staunch amidst the hardest challenges… and I’ll briefly quote from three such authors now.

1)    In 2021, a popular speaker, author and professor named Brene Brown wrote a book entitled Atlas of the Heart in which she explores the landscape of human emotion.  She writes, “Hope is a function of struggle – we develop hope not during the easy or comfortable times, but through adversity and discomfort….  Hope is not a warm, fuzzy emotion that fills us with a sense of possibility.  Hope is a way of thinking – a cognitive process [which helps one] believe in themselves and their abilities.”  Hope, then, is often forged in times of hardship, when someone or something helps us learn a belief that hard times will not be the end of us.   As someone who, 25 years ago, lost most of a year to clinical depression, I can attest that it is possible to learn how to be hopeful when all looks bleak.  It’s neither easy nor automatic, but it is possible.

 

2)    Back in 2007, Rev. Dr. Mark Giuliano, a minister then serving in The United Church of Canada wrote these words about the way hope is held in community: “During the first two days of my ordained ministry, I was called to minister at a funeral for a 16-month-old toddler who had been tragically killed in an automobile accident. 

“Not only was I filled with deep sorrow for the family of that small child, I was overwhelmed with a deep anxiety about having to be the one who would attempt to speak a word of hope [to] that community…. I wondered how we could possibly draw forth strength to praise God when our hearts were so heavy with grief.

“But as we began to sing, ‘Praise to the Lord, the almighty’ on that day of remembrance, our weak and quiet voices began to fill with strength and hope.  Even through our tears, people who were bent down [by] sorrow were able to stand straight.

“I learned some important lessons that day” Mark concludes.  “We offer God our worship not only when we have hope, but when we need hope.  I discovered that praising God isn’t a solo activity; we do it with and for each other.  And I experienced first-hand that when we rejoice in the Lord, it reminds us that even though our world may feel like it is spinning apart, God has not let go of us.”  Much like the Thessalonian Christians, who gained so much as they leaned into one another’s faith in times of trial, our Churches today are strengthened when we lean into one another’s faith in hard times.

3)    And we hear one more story of hope, this one from much earlier than 2007. There was a 14^th century English Christian Mystic named Julian of Norwich, whose story entered my heart when I spent part of my 2019 sabbatical in Norwich. 

When Julian was 30 years old, in the year 1373, she was gravely ill and nearly died.  Some think that her husband and child did die. At this time, Christ came to her through a series of visions, in which she came to know the mysteries of the Divine in a deep and holy way.  God and Christ and Spirit spoke to her in these visions at the foot of the cross, as the sufferings of Jesus spoke to the lives that people were living in her day.

Life in the 14^th century was not easy.  England was engaged in the 100 years’ war with France and “the Plague” hit Norwich three times in Julian’s lifetime, with the war and disease combining to kill a full 50% of the city’s population.  Amidst all of this, a vision of Christ on the cross said to Julian a message summed up in four words: ALL SHALL BE WELL.  When so many around her were dying because of war or illness, at a time when she wondered if she would survive, Jesus looked at her with love, and said “ALL SHALL BE WELL.”  Here’s the full quote, from Julian (Manton p.110, 68.16.66-73):

And this word: you shall not be overcome, was said sharply and mightily, for sureness and comfort against all tribulations that may come.  He did not say: you shall not be troubled, he did not say you shall not struggle, he did not say you shall not be diseased; but he did say: you shall not be overcome.  God wills that we take heed at this word, and that our faithful trust be strong in well and woe, for he loves us and delights in us…and all shall be well.

Over the past six centuries, the words of Julian of Norwich have brought comfort, in great part because they did not come from easy times.  But not only that, in Julian’s writings, the earliest existing writings by a woman in the English language, we are reminded that hope does not tend to come from happy, untested thoughts but neither does it just automatically appear as a product of hard times.  Hope is a gift from God – a gift from the Christ, who lived and died and lives again.

And so on this first Sunday of Advent, may hope be much more for you than wishful thinking.  May the hope spoken from Christ on the cross to Julian of Norwich, speak to your heart.  May the hope that Mark Giuliano spoke of, experienced as a hurting community of faith came together to sing songs of faith, speak to our gathering today.  May the learnings that can come from hard times, described by Brene Brown, help us as we learn to find hope.  And may the age-old resilience of the Church in Thessalonica, hopeful amidst persecution, hopeful despite all their idiosyncrasies, encourage your search for hope in times of calm, in times of chaos, and in times of challenge.  May all this be so. Amen.

 

References cited:

Brown, Brene. Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience.  NYC: Random House, 2021.  pp. 88-110.

Giuliano, Mark. “Where we Find Hope”, pp. 68-69 in Hardy, Nacy (ed) Singing a Song of Faith: Daily Reflections for Lent.  Toronto: UCPH, 2007.

Manton, Karen (text) and Muir, Lynne (illustrations/calligraphy). The Gift of Julian of Norwich. Leominster, UK: Gracewing, 2005.

 

© 2024 Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge.