ST. DAVID'S UNITED CHURCH: 2016

Sunday, December 25, 2016

HEIRS TO THE LIGHT

December 25, 2016

Christmas Day

(prayer)

For many people Christmas is the highlight of the church year. It is certainly the church festival that garners the most attention beyond people who are regularly active in Christian churches.

This is delightfully ironic given the fact that Christmas was an afterthought to the early church.

Celebrating the start of Jesus' life by remembering and telling the Christmas stories was not a common activity for early Christians.

This is something we can infer based on the contents of the New Testament.

Four distinct compositions about the life and teachings of Jesus were collected and deemed scripture by the Christian Church - the church preaches one gospel - good news known in Jesus, but our Bibles contain for versions of that gospel - the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Biblical Scholars believe that each gospel was written for a specific context - for a particular community of early Christians. There were similarities but also unique aspects to these communities that affected the style and emphases of each book.

The generally accepted scholarly theory is that (although each gospel is a unique composition) some of the content in the various books rely on common sources.

I won't go into the reasons [today] why, but it is surmised that Mark was the first gospel to be written... sometime in the early 70s of the first century - that's 40 years after Jesus' crucifixion, so the stories of Jesus' life had been percolating for four decades before Mark takes written form.

Matthew and Luke came along a few years later and built on Mark's gospel - which they both had access to evidenced by the fact that they copied some sections verbatim. Now, scholars do not believe that Luke and Matthew did not know about each other... they were both (independently) expanding what Mark had laid out.

The theory goes on to state that there was another common source to Matthew and Luke apart from Mark - a fifth gospel that did not survive on its own, but is only preserved in passages shared by Luke and Matthew, but not found in Mark. Google "Q Source Bible" to learn more.

John's gospel doesn't come for a couple more decades at least and was probably written by someone who had access to the other three gospels, but chooses to write a very different type of gospel - focused more on who Christ was for the church in the late first century, rather than who Jesus was in the early fourth decade of that century.

In summary, the biblical gospels were written in this order:

· Mark - early 70s

· Luke and Matthew - mid 70s

· John - 90s or later.

and when we take tnat into account, we can see how the place of Jesus' birth evolved within the biblical tradition.

In the oldest gospel, Mark, the story of Jesus begins with his baptism at about age 30.

Christmas was not important to Mark. At one point, Jesus is referred to as the son of Mary. Mark makes no mention of Joseph.

Luke and Matthew (independently) viewed this as a shortcoming of the earliest gospel. They both expanded Mark's material to share stories of the start of Jesus life.

But they drew on different traditions. If you have compared Matthew and Luke, you know that although there is a little overlap in some of the Christmas details, but Matthew's and Luke's Christmas stories are not the same:

· Luke is the stuff of Christmas pageants - pregnant Mary going with Joseph to Bethlehem for a census, where they find no room at the inn. Jesus' first cradle is an animal's manger. Luke has local shepherds (guided by singing angels) visit Jesus on the day he was born. After about a month the birth, the family goes back to Nazareth. No hint of controversy.

· Matthew - on the other hand - describes a celestial event (a star) which was interpreted by foreign scholars as signaling the birth of a new Jewish king. They decide to travel and bring gifts of tribute to this new king. These "magi" understandably assumed that the child king would be known to the current King of the Jews, Herod [the Great], who reigned from 40 BCE to 4BC. The magi discovered that Herod knew nothing about this new king, but was interested in learning more - like how long ago the child was born (i.e. when did the star first appear) and where he was now. Herod asked the wisemen to let him know where the child was (when they found him) under the guise of wanting to go and pay tribute to him as well. The magi eventually found Jesus (with his parents in a house in Bethlehem) where they offer him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh (note: the bible says "three gifts", not three wisemen, although magi is plural so there was more than one) - Matthew doesn't tell us anything about the circumstances of Jesus' actual birth or that Mary and Joseph had come from Nazareth originally. If all we had was Matthew, we would have to conclude that Joseph and Mary likely lived in Bethlehem before Jesus came along. Matthew's "Christmas" story ends with Herod (upset that the magi never returned with the child's whereabouts) chosing to eliminate Jesus, by systematically killing all of the young boys (under 2 years old). Jesus was spared because the family had fled the country before the death squads arrived at their home. After Herod died, the family did return, but they chose not to go back to Bethlehem, instead re-locating to Nazareth.

In summary:

· Luke - temporary census travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem, shepherds and a manger - no room in the inn;

· Matthew - living in a Bethlehem house, a guiding star, Wiseman and Herod's jealousy.

Both gospels agree that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and later grew up in Nazareth, but nowhere in the bible will you find magi and a star at a manger.

Recap...

Mark: Jesus' story starts with baptism.

Matthew-Luke: Jesus' story starts with his birth (although, they told quite different birth narratives).

Now...

John: The story of Jesus begins "In the beginning...". The fourth gospel intentionally echoes Genesis chapter one - to see the earthly Jesus as the human embodiment of the scared Word of God, which precedes the farthest and reaches of the past and continues to exist for all eternity. The 33 or so years of Jesus' walk on this globe was the Word become flesh and dwelling among us.

John worries not about Christmas details.

We can see the reverse evolution of the gospels origins: from start of the practice of ministry to first breath to pre-existing word; from worthy of attention when he began to teach and heal to worthy of attention as a baby to always been worthy.

The expansion of gospel details as the first century unfolded makes perfect sense... the longer the Jesus Movement existed, the greater the desire to delve deeper into its meaning... the more the sacred texts (Old Testament) were searched for support and justification for what the church had come to believe (not only about the life of Jesus) but what it meant to believe that the Risen Christ was a present reality for the members of the earth church.

The centre of the Christian Bible (old and new testaments) is the Biblical Christ... and the centre of the Biblical Christ is the Historical Jesus.

Followers of this Jesus (of every era of the church) are the ones who care about what Jesus (historically) cared about.

The anonymous letter to "The Hebrews" claimed (metaphorically) that Jesus was God's worthy and rightful heir: as a first born son was seen as the rightful heir in a human family in the ancient near east of the late first century.

John told us this morning that - in human form and as everlasting Word, that Jesus is the "light of life for all people".

I said earlier that John's gospel has an intentionally different style than the others. It was written much later (20+ years after M,M,L. It was written for new generations of followers who had no one to tell them of first hand contact with Jesus. John's gospel invites people to believe without seeing. It is John who tells the doubting Thomas story.

The believing theme begins in chapter one... believing in Jesus allows us to recognize that we are Children of God... that we are creatures of spirit as well as flesh.

As Children of God, we can shine the light of God's Word. We are heirs of the light which Jesus shined, when the word was flesh for a while.

Whether we count - as beginning - Jesus' baptism, or his birth, or even the Spirit of God hovering over the face of the deep, what matters is how we choose to hold the Light in our lives right now.

The world around us is already to move beyond Christmas. I was in the dollar store yesterday afternoon and valentine day stuff was out.

Our Christmas challenge is this...

· See through Jesus' eyes.

· Feel with Jesus' heart.

· Gently touch with Jesus' hands.

· Humbly walk this created world of God with Jesus' feel.

· Shine the light of God, so all can know their worth!

Let us pray:

We offer you a new song, God. It is a song of thanksgiving, a song of passion, a song of praise, and a song of hope and promise. We will live lives worthy of Jesus’ legacy. Amen.

#69VU “Away in a Manger”

Saturday, December 24, 2016

LOCAL HERO

December 24, 2016

Christmas Eve

Luke 2:1-19

When I was a student at seminary (theological college) in the late 1980s, near the end of my second year of the four year Master of Divinity degree, I participated in the customary "mid-term review".

To the best of my memory, it involved sitting down with the principal, my faculty advisor and the United Church chaplain to discuss how I was progressing through the program with a view to seeing if I was on track to complete my studies when anticipated. It was more than an academic discussion - more than whether I would be ready to graduate in two years, but was I also developing skills that would be necessary for the practice of ministry in the church.

At the Vancouver School of Theology, mid-term reviews had a reputation of being stressful critical times, so I was quite nervous going into it, but for me, it was such an encouraging experience. Maybe it was because I had a good sense of where I was in my academic plan that the faculty had little advice for me in that regard. Regardless, what stuck with me from that time was that they encouraged me to not become isolated in the world of study... to spend time outside the bubble of the seminary and stay connected to the real world.

I remember being at the (same) principal's home for a new students' welcome get-together a year-and-a-half year and seeing that one room was completely rimmed with floor to ceiling bookshelves filled with mostly paperback books - many of which were double-stuffed with novels in front of novels.

So, I was not surprised when Rev. Dr. Martin suggested that I escape into fiction on a regular basis. Read and enjoy things that have nothing directly to do with your studies.

Someone else pointed out that, as a minister, I would find myself reflecting theologically on the themes of the stories embedded in fiction.

The problem was that I was never much of a novel reader... after a four year undergrad degree followed a year articling in an accounting office, then by two years at the Vancouver School of Theology, I was reading all of the time... only it was limited to books directly relating to my studies. I had no time or energy to read just for fun.

But I did escape into fiction. I just enjoyed my fiction in the form of movies... usually at the $1/show in the students union building at UBC.

And so, my midterm reviewers encouraged me to theologically reflect on what I watched on a screen, rather than words on a page

I still do that today.

People who know me, know that I love movies of all genres.

You may have experienced that, on more than one occasion, I have made reference to some of my favorite movie scenes in sermons I have preached.

You saw the trailer to Bill Forsyth's 1983 movie called Local Hero.

Has anyone seen it?

It is hard to find... almost never on TV and it is not on Netflix or CraveTV in Canada at least. I think it is on iTunes.

[I have DVD and VHS copies]

When people press me to name my 'favorite movie', Local Hero is usually my answer and I like "lots" of movies. Local Hero is a simple story with interesting characters, but not amazing enough to get much attention even with 70 year old screen legend Burt Lancaster on the marquee. Bill Forsyth won the British Academy Film Award for Best Director, but 1983 was the year of Scarface, Return of the Jedi, Flashdance, Risky Business and The Big Chill, so Local Hero was not noticed much on this side of the pond. Film Critic associations liked it (giving it a couple of Best Screenplay awards), but it was completely ignored by Oscar. Terms of Endearment won the Best Picture Oscar for 1983.

And yet, I loved Local Hero when I saw it at The Princess Theatre when I was at the UofA and it touches my heart and mind everytime I get a chance to watch it again.

As you might have gotten from the trailer, the story centres around "Mac" McIntyre of Knox Oil and Gas who is sent to negotiate the purchase of all of the land in and around the fictional Scottish seaside fishing village of Ferness so they can build an oil refinery and deep water port. Mac assumes that it will be a little tricky to convince these people to be uprooted from their little town, so he treads lightly at first. However, things are not as they appear:

[video of scene where all the towns people are secretly meeting trying to get the maximum amount of money from the sales]

News tends to travel fast

around here.

Jesus' birth barely noticed. With the exception of his parents, a midwife and a few nosy locals, most of the world spun along on its axis without any special excitement on the first Christmas.

Even in the years afterwards, news didn't even travel that fast.

Letters: (50s) Paul shared no Christmas Story only saying that Jesus was born of a woman, born under the law (Galations 4:4).

Gospels: (early 70s) Nothing in Mark - starts with 30 year old Jesus being baptized by John that Baptist. (mid 70s) Matthew and Luke did tell Christmas stories, knew different birth traditions - and Matthew's gospel barely mentions the birth of Jesus closing instead to focus on a story that takes place when Jesus is as old as two years of age. (by 90s) John didn't care about Christmas at all other than to proclaim (in a poetic opening chapter) that the Word [of God] became flesh and lived among us (John 1:14).

It is only Luke's gospel that paints the common images of baby Jesus lying in a manger that we see on our Christmas cards.

That is why churches almost exclusively read (as we did tonight) from Luke, chapter two.

What really got Jesus noticed by those who wanted to share his story was his mid-life career as a travelling preacher-healer.

Had Jesus not made an impact with words and actions as a thirty year old, no one would have wasted anytime trying to imagine what might have happened on the day he was born.

As a baby, Jesus was a local hero at best.

And that puts him in the same category of every newborn - devoutly loved and appreciated by those around her or him, but ignored by almost everyone outside the room.

News about Jesus' birth may not have traveled very fast, but it did make an eventual steady journey that leads us all to this place tonight.

And so, here we are...

None of the biblical traditions about Jesus' birth were ever intended to stand on their own.

This is true whether we hear the oldest tradition: stating the basic biology and context that Jesus was born of a woman, born under the law or the latest biblical tradition: making a poetic statement that (in Jesus) the Word of God became living flesh.

Even when we hear the streams of tradition talking about Jesus as an infant and a toddler, "Christmas" is never meant to be heard as an isolated story.

Celebrating Jesus' birth has to be more than just thinking about shepherds visiting a baby lying in a manger or traveling astrologers bringing odd gifts to a toddler in his home.

A meaningful Christmas Celebration will always invite us to address the impact of whole life of Jesus and not just his first breaths.

Early Christians (coming to terms with Jesus' untimely death as an inconvenient opponent to Roman imperial rule) found helpful language in old words of the Hebrew tradition that stemed from seven-plus centuries before Jesus' lifetime.

Several decades after Jesus' death, the spiritual movement which he initiated had not faded away (as Pontius Pilate envisioned would happen after Jesus was crucified) but had grown and evolved to include a much more diverse discipleship that could have been imagined while Jesus walked the earth.

That new generation of those who followed Jesus' Way heard the words of Isaiah, chapter 9 with fresh ears. In their original context those words spoke about an 8th century BCE son of a Judean king. For early Christians of the 1st century CE, the 750 year old words also described what they had come to believe about Jesus:

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)

The early Christians did not come to that conclusion because of Luke's Christmas tale, but because of what 30 year old Jesus did and said.

Those who walked and talked with that Jesus heard and saw a vision of how the world would look if God was caesar: if they lived under the Realm of God and not the Empire of Rome.

Sometimes, Jesus spoke about this with words, explicity:

· The Kingdom of God is like a tiny seed that grows into a large tree.

· The Kingdom of God is like a woman who refuses to accept that a valuable coin is lost and painstakingly cleans the house until it is found.

· The Kingdom of God is like an employer who pays all of the employees enough to feed their families for the day, no matter how many hours they worked.

Sometimes, Jesus spoke about the Realm of God with implicit words:

· Don't return violence with violence, instead meet the needs of the moment with peace - turn the other cheek, feed the hungry, visit the sick and imprisoned, give warm clothes to the cold.

· Even if you are poor or thirsty or oppressed, you are loved and blessed by God.

· Loving your neighbour as yourself means acting like a neighbour to someone you might not want to consider as your neighbour.

Sometimes, Jesus mentored the Realm of God in his actions:

· He went against common practice by inviting children to mill around with the adults, even when important discussions were going on.

· Jesus did not turn his back on those who wanted to get closer to Jesus - even a tax collecting Roman collaborator or a woman labelled as a sinner who everyone else had learned to shun or another woman considered untouchable and certainly less important that the sick daughter of a respected religious leader.

· When armed soldiers came to arrest Jesus because one of his own disciples had tipped them off as to a good time and place, Jesus insisted that his more loyal disciples not draw their swords to try and stop them.

It was because of what Jesus said and did (as told to new generations of believers) that the early church was able to see Jesus in the prophet Isaiah's words: Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Furthermore, they believed that the ideals which Jesus espoused did not die on the cross - that the spirit of a risen christ continued to guide them along a sacred way of living in each new age.

Like Jesus did, for Jesus' followers, even decades (or millenia) later, the hope and possibility of the Realm of God was made real in words and actions.

To deeply celebrate Christmas, we also seek to live out what was centrally important to Jesus' teaching: to move the focus from the minimal impact of a barely noticed local hero to a world changing prince of peace

And so, this night, as we are reminded of The Way of Jesus began Away in a Manger, let us each consider how (in the daily routines of our lives, here and now) we can...

Love our God with our whole

heart, soul and strength

and

love our neighbour as ourself.

(Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18)

This might just make real the words "Joy to the World" and "Heavenly Peace"

Prayers of the People

Let us pray:

Gracious, loving and merciful God, on this Christmas Eve, as the light of your Word penetrates our hearts, as we are reminded of the gift of life and faith, as the glories of the heavenly hosts are echoed in our church, we open ourselves up to your Spirit and give you thanks. We are grateful, Lord Jesus, that your story has become our story, and we celebrate your birth.

Continue, we pray, to instill in us a profound sense of your abiding presence, and help us to take to heart the wonder of your love, that we may walk in your ways and delight in your will.

Help us, Lord God, to be the faithful, gracious, loving, giving and forgiving people you would have us be.

And so, we embrace your world and all of its people as our sisters and brother, whether they believe as we do or not. We pray that peace will be known by those who live in the midst of war and terror; we pray that comfort will be known to those who are grieving; that calm will be known by the worried, and ease will be experienced by the sick; we pray for those whose lives are dictated by fear or a love of money or power; we pray that the hard hearts of the greedy will be softened; we pray that the resourceful will live out a just gratitude with generosity so that no one, any where, is denied the dignity and safety of a warm bed and a full belly.

In these ways, use us, O God, to be the hands and feet and heart of Christ in the world.

Finally, hear us as we join together in a modern paraphrase of Jesus' family prayer:

Abba God, you are beyond us

and so we call you holy.

Govern our lives here

just as you rule in heaven.

May we live as would have us live.

Meet our most basic needs,

day by day.

Do not hold our bad choices

against us.

Teach us how to let go of wrongs

done to us by others.

Help us resist hate, greed

and many other temptations

and evils.

Return us to your goodness.

In you is glory, power

and our true home.

Amen!

Giving Our Offerings:

(remain seated)

#74VU “What Child is This?"

Sunday, December 18, 2016

A MARY CAROL

December 18, 2016

Advent 4

The St. David's Sunday School presented the Christmas story as a drama - A Mary Carol written by Katherine Willis Pershey.

Sunday, December 11, 2016

ADJUSTING COURSE

December 11, 2016

Advent 3

Isaiah 35:1-10

Matthew 11:2-11

(prayer)

There is an episode, in the "Voyager" Star Trek TV series, called Timeless. It first aired in 1998 and centered on the key theme that dominated the whole series: The crew of the USS Voyager, under the leadership of Captain Catherine Janeway, were trying to get back to earth having been abruptly been taken 70,000 light years away from home by an advanced alien lifeform. When that alien died, so did their hopes of a quick return. At maximum warp speed, 70,000 light years would take about 75 years to traverse.

That's the story arc of the whole series: being alone in an unknown part of the galaxy, methodically making their way back to Federation space, encountering new species along the way - all the while trying to find new technologies and natural phenomenon that might get them home earlier.

The episode Timeless describes a time when the crew of Voyager had installed a Borg-inspired 'slipstream' drive on their starship which would allow them to travel thousands of times faster than usual. It could allow them to get home in a matter of hours rather than years.

The problem was that the slipstream drive was not fully compatible with Federation technology. It was not able to automatically adjust their trajectory quick enough to compensate for small spacial variants that were occurring in the stream ahead of them.

The solution was to have two crew members fly ahead of the starship in a smaller shuttle craft, recognize the variations earlier, calculate the necessary course corrections and send them back to Voyager with time to make the adjustments.

The episode is more complex than that (involving at least two ships getting destroyed in an alternate timeline) but I won't spoil the whole plot. But... the fact that the series was on the air for another season-and-a-half longer should give you a hint if they made it home that day or not.

As it usually does, the Gospel According to Star Trek points to a universal truth...

No matter how well we map out the future path we want to follow, we will almost certainly be required to make some course adjustments along the way.

When Jesus was about thirty years old, he made a dramatic career change: setting aside the toolbox of a carpenter to pick up the backpack of a travelling teacher and healer. Given the life-expectancy of a non-landowning peasant in first century Palestine, that made this a mid-life shift.

Last week I shared the assertion that, before Jesus fully embraced his own ministry, he spent time among the followers of John the Baptist.

Jesus was clearly attracted to John's basic message: The Kingdom of God had come near. It is time to reclaim our faithfulness.

John invited people to symbolize this 'turning around' of one's life by being baptised in the Jordan River - near which John had set up his preaching place.

Jesus would eventually become a travelling preacher... he came to you; John, on the other hand, was a settled preacher... you went to him.

Like John's other disciples, Jesus - too - chose to be immersed in the waters of baptism. [We'll be reading that story in a few weeks... on January 8th.]

John's preaching invited people to connect their faith to the world around them. He did not shy away from commenting on current events. He preached a practical theology. John was not afraid to point out the life hypocrisies of the leaders of the day. Matthew, Mark and Luke all relay the fact that John criticized Herod Antipas, the ruler of Perea and Galilee, because he divorced his wife in order to marry the wife of his half-brother. Herod did not like this public criticism. Since Twitter didn’t exist yet for Herod to confront his critics, he had John arrested.

Given the fact that John was a settled preacher, he would have been easy to find.

As I mentioned last week, it was after John was arrested that Jesus began a ministry of his own... emphasizing the same message as John: The Kingdom of God has come near.

I am intrigued by the scholarly theory that it was John's easy arrest that - at least in part - motivated Jesus to take his show on the road. A biblical source tradition [Q] records that Jesus once remarked that "Foxes have holes, birds have nests: but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head." (Lk9:58; Mt8:20)

Maybe Jesus was a bit worried that disgruntled leaders might come after him like they had John, so Jesus moved around a lot.

Not only did Jesus change the course of his life's work, he also made, what turned out to be, a wise adjustment to how John had been doing similar work.

In that new path as a preacher, Jesus (like John before him) did not retreat into a theoretical theological bubble; everything that he said and did embraced the practicalities of the world he (and his audiences) lived in.

As I preached last week, Jesus wanted people to experience the joys of God's Kingdom in their lives here and now. As the New Testament would later record, it was Jesus' prayer that God's will be done "on earth as it is in heaven".

To that end, Jesus told stories and mentored examples of how people could change their lives - now - to align themselves to the joy of living as if God was caesar of the world.

Like John, there was more than an implied rebellious political bent to his words and actions - the Kingdom of God over the Kingdom of Caesar.

When Jesus (like John before him) called people to Repent, for the Kingdom of God has come near, it was a call to change course. The hebrew word that Jesus and John might have used for repentance (teshuvah) had a root meaning of 'returning' - a turning around. That is how the original audiences would have understood the call to repent: to return to God.

For the greek reading audience of the New Testament, metanoéō's root meaning of 'after mind' would have enveloped the call to repentance in an invitation to change one's mind, so as not to miss desired opportunities.

I think that both the Galilee and Greek contexts of Jesus' and John's call to repent for the Kingdom of God has come near are helpful for us to hear that same invitation today.

To centre one's life on God is to make adjustments to the paths of our lives so that we can [better] match the scriptural goals that Jesus said were paramount: Love God with your heart, soul and strength (Dt6:5) and love your neighbour as yourself (Lev19:18).

Jesus and John were raised in a tradition that encouraged regular ritualistic acts as reminders to realign the practice of their lives with the goal of their faith. Don't think of this as straying from their faith and returning, but as a discipline of pausing regularly within the busyness of the normal practices of daily living and consciously appreciating that they were belov`ed creatures of a loving God.

It is normal and understandable that we can get so caught up in the details of life that we get distracted from the big picture of whose we are. That is equally true whether we are happy or stressed with the distractions.

I want us to discard the guilt-focused notion that repent for the Kingdom of God has come near is all about 'confession and forgiveness' and replace it with a welcome that emphasizes 'gratitude and enjoyment'.

A gratitude-enjoyment focus is the much older and authentic biblical tradition... and it certainly was the approach that Jesus emphasized... even more than John the Baptist did... another course direction Jesus made when he filled the void left by John's arrest.

Gratitude and Enjoyment.

There is another interesting difference between the habits of John and Jesus.

The Baptist was described as living a very meager life out in the wilderness: wearing rustic clothing and eating simple foods of the wild. The image is that of a person who is privately fasting as a spiritual discipline... preparing for a joy that is still to come.

Jesus, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy the social nature of feast gatherings... as if the joy was a present reality.

If we had read a few verses further in Matthew, chapter eleven, we would have heard Jesus describe that both approaches drew criticisms from onlookers: John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, “He has a demon”; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!” (Mt11:18-19)

Damned if you.

Damned if you don't.

Jesus made the course correction from confession and forgiveness to gratitude and enjoyment.

It was a course that had a history of hope within Jesus' hebrew faith tradition: The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing... they shall obtain joy and gladness and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. (Is35:1-2,10)

The third candle lighting our advent way stands out among the others... placing a special emphasis on the value of joy being a companion on this journey of faith.

Today we find ourselves at the midpoint of 2016's advent season.

Our scriptures and our candles-and-banners today are inviting us to examine how much time we are allotting for joy in our lives right now.

I know as much as anyone that joy doesn't necessarily come easily in our world today. We often feel obligated to delay joy in favour of hard work. Joy is sometimes seen as a luxury we can't afford right now.

For many years now, I, personally, have struggled with what I am prone to call my December Blues. With the help of family, friends and counsellors, over the years, I am now better able to understand how and why this is a pattern for me.

Please allow me a personal moment here: from a purely personal perspective, I use this third Sunday in Advent as a spiritual discipline to try and change the direction of my December Blues by intentionally pausing in moments of gratitude for the joy that does exist in my life right now, as opposed to the joy that I know is lacking. Some years the attempt has a lasting impact; other years, I simply need to appreciate the respite of the moment.

For most of the sixteen years, I have been St. David's minister, I have offered a special service late in the advent season to honour the feelings of grief and sadness and worry that exist for some people at this time of year that everything around us is proclaiming it to be a time of Joy to the World and Glad Tidings. This is not especially unique to St. David's: lots of churches hold Blue Christmas or Longest Night services.

I know a singer-songwriter who openly admits that one of the reasons he plays songs is because he just wants to hear music. Sometimes, we are drawn into vocations or volunteer activities that offer something to others that we, too, are trying to achieve.

I lead an annual Longest Night Service, in part, because I need to know my own sadness and worry is not forgotten or ignored by God.

This year, because I was too slow at putting the December 21st Longest Night Service on the church calendar, a music recital will be happening in the main sanctuary that night. And so, my service will be held in the Children's Sanctuary (room 3).

I didn't plan it, but I am embracing the symbolism of having to find time and space in the midst of a busy season to work at squeezing some needed joy in to life. And to do this not by ignoring the less joyful aspects of our humanity, but by acknowledging that - even in our loneliness, God is with us.

Contrary to what many people think... joy takes work.

But it is good work. Good for us.

And so, as this Advent journey moves closer to a stable in Bethlehem, I (personally) will be working on being grateful for the joy of being a child of God, even as this child of God has his worries to carry as well.

There are course adjustments that I will need to make along this way.

I encourage you to never be afraid to reorient yourself towards God's joy too.

Let us pray:

God, you are the source of all goodness. We long to be happy and safe. We hold tight to your promise of joy to the world. Amen.

#326VU “O For a Thousand Tongues”