God’s Interruption of Our Expectations – A Sermon on Transfiguration

March 1, 2022 The Rev. Erik Parker Leave a comment

GOSPEL: Luke 9:28-36 [37-43a]
Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. 29And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. 30Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. 31They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. 32Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. 33Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said. 34While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. 35Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” 36When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

Today, we come to the end of an unusually long season after Epiphany… Nearly two months ago, a lifetime ago, we gathered with the wisemen around the Christ-child to worship this new king sent to save the people. And in the weeks that followed, the divine Christ was revealed to us in different ways, each time pushing us, making us ready for today. For this journey up the mountain of Transfiguration… because on the mountaintop everything changes and the world as know it will come to an end. On this mountain, Jesus charts a course that puts him on a collision course with our efforts to be like God, to be in control of our own fate.

Transfiguration Sunday is a hinge Sunday, a Sunday that swings us from one part of the story into the next. From the dark of Christmas night, into the bright noonday desert sun of Lent. Transfiguration is that moment where the bright lights are too much to take in and our eyes need some time to adjust.

These past two months have shown us a world that we were not prepared to see, a world that we did not expect. It has felt as between Sundays, between the stories that showed us again and again the Christ revealed in ways – in his baptism, at the wedding of Cana, filling fishing hets on the lake, preaching in Nazareth, and preaching blessings on the plain…. In between of all that a Pandemic thought to be winding down has raged, our family friends and neighbours occupied streets in Ottawa, important border crossings and the roadways outside of provincial legislatures all in name of freedom, with some white supremacy accelerationismon the side. And then as if that wasn’t enough… a peace between western nations that has last, if not uneasily, for 70 years, was broken as Russian military forces invaded Ukraine.

In in twist of sick irony, the bright lights of bombs and gun fire has revealed to us a whole new world.

Back on the mountain of transfiguration, things begin innocuously enough down in the valley, where Jesus decides to bring a select few with him to climb a mountain. Peter, James and John… oh, and the rest of us… are chosen to follow Jesus up the mountain. If you have ever had the chance to climb a mountain, you will know that it is not as glamorous as it sounds. It is mostly staring at the ground and the feet of the person in front of you as you tiredly trudge uphill. Once in a while there is a stop or pause to admire a view, but then more trudging.

So after Jesus, Peter, James and John have trudged up their mountain, the disciples are understandably tired, sleepy even. And in their tired and sleepy state all of a sudden, Moses and Elijah appear. The two greatest prophets of Israel. And they are standing next to Jesus… but not normal Jesus. Jesus in dazzling white, looking suitably prophet-esque himself.

Now before unpacking what happens next, it is important to know about all the clues we missed up until this point. The religious practice of Israel of the day was centred around the Jerusalem temple and laws of Leviticus. Making sacrifices in the temple and keeping the laws to maintain one’s purity and righteousness was how you stayed in God’s good books. The burden of righteousness of salvation rested on the shoulders of people. And the Jerusalem temple and its priests were the chief judges and gatekeepers of righteousness, making sure that only those who could keep the law and make sacrifices were given righteous status.

But before the levitical laws and Jerusalem temple, there were the prophets of Israel. Messengers appointed by and speaking on behalf of God who brought God’s righteousness and mercy and compassion to God’s people. These prophets were the patriarchs of Israel, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But chiefly Moses and Elijah. And these prophets represented God away from the temple, and apart from the following the law. They often came preaching from the wilderness, they met God on holy mountains, they brought the very voice of God to God’s people.

So as Jesus and his disciples trudge up this mountain, the clues are there. Jesus is not aligning himself with the centre of religious authority, with the temple and its laws. But rather with the prophets of old, those appointed directly by God to represent God to the people.

And there on the mountain of transfiguration, Jesus receives his prophetic appointment, just as Moses and Elijah did. Confirmation that God was sending Jesus, the Messiah, to bring God’s righteousness, God’s love and mercy to God’s people.

And yet even in this moment Peter cannot escape the burden of keeping the law, the sense that he must do that work of saving himself.

“It is good for us to be here, let us make three dwellings.”

Peter wants to preserve this holy moment and make it a holy place, a place where the faithful can go to earn their righteousness. Peter just cannot imagine a faithfulness that doesn’t include his responsibility to earn his salvation. Peter cannot imagine a faithfulness outside of what he knows and experienced outside of his expectations.

We see you Peter. And we know you.

We totally get this feeling.

As for the past 20 years our world slowly shifted and twisted away from our expectations, as the church slowly but surely stopped being a given in Canadian society, in the lives our neighbours, friends, and family… maybe even in our own week to week routines… We understood that feeling that Peter has… we know in our bones what the world is supposed to look like, we know what being faithful Christians takes. And it almost hurts things aren’t just woking they are supposed to anymore.

Following the rules, paying taxes, working hard is not the guarantee of a safe, secure, peaceful life it once was. Showing up to church with an offering envelope – when Sunday morning didn’t conflict other more exciting options – isn’t the promise that church will just be there when we need it that it once was.

And certainly these past 2 years have crumbled our expectations that life will just keep going as it always has, the pace of change accelerated while we have held on desperately to the hope that we can go back to what things were.

Finally this week, the 70 years of relative security and comfort for the Western World has come crashing down. Where we go from here no one knows, but building a dwelling place on top of a mountain is possible any more. There is no going back.

So yeah, we totally get Peter’s feeling of being burdened. We would almost certainly want to do the same thing if we were standing on that mountain, we would try to capture the moment, hoping to continue life as we once knew it.

Yet, before Peter gets too far into his plans to hold on.

God interrupts.

Just as God spoke in Jesus’ Baptism, just as God spoke over the waters of creation, God speaks again.

“This is My Son, My Chosen, listen to him!”

And what is that Jesus has said?

Well, he has NOT told his disciples and the crowds that earning their righteousness comes through keeping the law and making sacrifice at the temple.

In fact, the last time that Jesus said anything before going up this mountain was to predict his death. That he will suffer, be rejected and be killed. And on the third day be raised again.

Jesus has just told his confused disciples that he is coming to meet God’s people, to meet them in the midst of their suffering and rejection. And to die just as they die. Jesus has just told his disciples that he has come to bridge the distance between God and creation, and has come to carry their burdens.

Jesus has come to carry their burden of righteousness earning to the cross.

Jesus has come to carry our burden of faithfulness to the grave.

Jesus has come to carry the burdens of God’s people so that we don’t have carry our burdens alone.

This Messiah born in the manger, baptized in the Jordan, who turned water into wine in Cana, who filled the fishing nets on the lake, who preached on the plain… this Jesus, transfigured Prophet of the most high God does not stay on the mountain for an important reason.

God’s prophets are not sent to go up mountains.

They are sent to go down.

To bring God down to God’s people.

Jesus the Messiah is coming down the mountain with Peter, James and John… and the rest of us… so that we can know that it is not our burden to earn our righteousness nor our right to stay on the mountain-top. So that we can face our changing world, even though we would rather stick with a world that meets our expectations.

Still, God has always been coming down to meet us and to carry our burdens, to walk with us in suffering, to show us the way through uncharted waters.

God comes down to meet us every time we gather as community, no matter how many of us there are.

God comes down to us whether we are in church every week, or have forgotten that church entirely.

God comes to down to us in a world that we hardly recognize, to remind that us in the midst of the chaos God reminds the same and holds us to a faith that roots us in the image of God, that gives us an identity in the Body of Christ.

God comes to meet us in this place and in many more places of worship whether they are full or nearly empty, whether the budget is easy to meet or underwater, whether we follow the success comes easy or we have no idea where to begin.

God comes to meet us because we are God’s people, weighed down with burdens that only God can carry.

And so God comes to carry them and to carry us.

In God’s Word spoken here, in the waters of God’s cleansing grace, in the bread and wine of mercy, Christ’ body and blood – in all these things, God comes down the mountain to us.

And so on this Transfiguration Sunday, as we also go down the mountain with Jesus, we are reminded God is always on the way down to us.

covid-19, Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Haven’t we seen this before? Pastor Thoughts on the Cycles of History.

March 1, 2022 The Rev. Erik Parker 1 Comment

For the first part of this week, I couldn’t shake feeling tired and worn out with a mild sense of impending doom. I am sure we have all been there lately.

There are of course many possible reasons:

Omicron which has certainly broken us and changed this whole pandemic on its head.

Then there were the “trucker/freedom” protests/ occupations happening across Canada.

And the question of war that has been lingering in the air over Russia and Ukraine.

When the news of troop movements followed by explosions and the real outbreak of war, it all started falling into place.

I have seen this before… I think?

When I was in university, I had a predilection for two areas of study. The first was theology and Christian history, which probably seems obvious. The second was 20th Century history, particularly the two World Wars. In university I was often schlepping between theology classes and history of modern warfare classes.

Though, I probably sounded like a raving lunatic to most, I have often thought there is a similarity between the past 20 years of history and the period between World War One, the Great Depression and World War Two.

History can be viewed in cycles, and this 70 year period of relative economic and political peace for much of the (western) world has been an unusual blip on the timeline of humanity.

Finally this week the peace that the western world has known since 1945 was breached. There is now conflict on the soil of Europe for the first time since the Nazis were defeated.

Our place in the cycle of history seems more assured now, and this is what I have “seen” before.

The war on terrorism and its intractability rings too true with World War One. This pandemic has had similar effects on us as did the Great Depression. And now the Russian Invasion of Ukraine is straight out of Adolf Hitler’s playbook, even down to the speech Vladimir Putin gave this week justifying his attack.

Even if western sanctions, the bravery of ordinary Ukrainian folks and political turmoil back in Russia ends this war before it spreads too far, the damage is done. The balance of our world’s order is forever altered.

Now what does that have to do with us? With Christians about the world? Lutherans in Canada? With neighbourhood congregations?

Today, we don’t know yet.

But I suspect it has something to do with our calling as people of faith. The world is stumbling from crisis to crisis. Institutions of governments and power are failing at providing an equitable and just world. People are on the edge.

And as followers of Jesus, we have a message, a gospel promise that speaks directly to a suffering and dying world.

For people in need of hope, we follow a God of Hope.

For people in need of new life, we are made alive in a God of empty tombs and resurrection.

For people in need of love and mercy, we are called to care for a world in need.

As difficult as it is to be the church these days, the world has never needed us more.

And so we keep following, know that wherever this world is headed, God in Christ is right there with us, giving us what we need.

covid-19, Theology & Culture

We are not okay – Giving up on COVID, Convoys, and the Right Wing Death Cult.

February 9, 2022 The Rev. Erik Parker 6 Comments

We are not okay.

‘We’ meaning civilized society broadly, North America and Canada more specifically.

I think Omicron broke us.

Human beings are usually quite responsive in a crisis. That’s why we open our wallets, send food and clothes, volunteer where we can. Earthquakes, forest fires, tornados etc… House fires, robberies, floods etc… Terminal illness, accidents, tragedies etc…

So when COVID first hit us last year, it was relatively easy for us to adopt a crisis mentality. Especially during a time when we were all affected, when so much was unknown and there was plenty to be afraid of.

In short order, COVID-19 hit us hard. People got sick and some people died.

The reasons to follow public health orders seemed obvious then.

Now, there were those early on who struggled making personal sacrifices for the sake of the many. Most notably the entitled and wealthy, celebrities and politicians (who couldn’t seem to stop having parties, travelling for holidays and generally breaking the rules that they set in place for the rest of us).

There were also the chaos agents. People who had meltdowns in grocery stores. People who threw big house parties. People who could not bring themselves to follow any restrictions but instead starting casting about for conspiracy theories and deniability of reality.

But for the most part, it seemed that the majority complied with the effort to reduce sickness, hospitalization and death.

Of course, as time went on, the segment of those who have been resisting and breaking restrictions during the past two years has grown and shifted from group to group. Some loudly protested and unexpected people turned into chaos agents, but we sort of had the masking, social distancing thing figured out.

And then came the vaccines. Salvation. The end. Back to normal.

While the majority couldn’t wait to roll up their sleeves fast enough, the chaos agents started banging the anti-vaxx drums. We all know how that went by the fall of 2021 and the Delta wave.

More people got sick and more people died. Mostly unvaccinated people.

Meanwhile, the vaccinated were getting back to a new normal.

It seemed like the narrative that we had heard all along (though with plenty of caveats from health experts) had come true. The crisis arc, though long, had come to pass. There was a pandemic, the scientists raced against the clock to find the cure (vaccine), and then we rolled it out as fast as we could. The lingering nature of the pandemic was hard, but there seemed to be natural arc that we had figured out and the crisis was ending.

And then Omicron showed up.

And it broke us.

Or more accurately, Omicron turned the pandemic from a temporary crisis into a systematic problem. It felt like March 2020 all over again. The same problems repeating themselves, the cycle was restarted – so it seemed.

Perhaps more accurately, cases exploded, resources for testing and contact tracing couldn’t keep up and the health system began to buckle.

The thing that we had been warned to prepare for since March of 2020 happened.

And again for the zillionth wave of the pandemic, people got sick and some people died.

But in the face of this brutal Omicron wave, government leaders threw their hands in the air and said there was not more to be done. Everyone was going to encounter the virus. They bet on the fact that Omicron was “less severe.”

Meanwhile the chaos agents started collecting followers and the right-wing saw an opportunity.

Making money, living our best lives, looking out of number one…. So many people decided that we just cannot put that off anymore, no matter the cost. No matter how many get sick, how many get long covid or myocarditis, no matter how many die… all of that is okay, as long as won’t have to wear masks in stores, or have smaller birthday parties, or zoom a little more often.

And now vaccinated people were getting sick, it was the justification needed to loudly proclaim that none of the public heath measures of the past to years had done anything to stop the virus but only oppressed the average working person.

Time to go back to normal no matter the cost. Hospitals full, healthcare workers burning out, business and institutions struggling to maintain staffing. Time to abandon the fight – death may come. But at least we can have our ~~hedonism~~ freedom.

Now the pandemic can stop being a crisis. Conservatives governments and their hard right supporters have decided that we can now treat the pandemic like they do all other social problems and issues.

Whether it is climate change, white supremacy’s systems of power, sexism, homophobia and transphobia, poverty, economic inequality etc… It doesn’t matter if people get sick, if people suffer, if people are oppressed or if people die.

The right has declared that ~~hedonism~~ freedom should reign.

People should fix their own problems, the weak, the lazy, the less fortunate deserve what they have. Don’t let their issues infringe on my ~~hedonism~~ rights and freedom.

Now we have Freedom Convoys ejecting conservatives political leaders for not bending the knee to the death cult. We have communities across the country being terrorized by the same kind of tactics that the Black Shirts of Italy and Brown Shirts of Germany used. The kind of tactics that I remember being taught that good democratic people know how to stand up to.

So, given all of this, I am worried about us. Maybe more worried than I have ever been.

We are not okay.

We cannot get our act together on economic inequality, with billionaires more powerful than any feudal king ever was.

We cannot seem to make progress on racism, sexism, and all manners of systematic bigotry.

We cannot seem to make our leaders care enough about climate change to do something meaningful about it (see point about billionaries above).

We keep trying to play political games with a virus, making trade-offs instead of decisive actions.

And now a big chunk of society, the hard and growing right is imposing its death cult on our public health response too.

Poor people can die. Marginalized people can die. The Earth can die. The sick can die. They all can die if they in any way threaten our ~~hedonism~~ rights and freedom.

I think we are sitting at a crossroads as a civilization.

We can continue down the path of death. The one of political appeasement of a small voting base that is willing to hold the rest of us hostage rules the day… (convoys or billionaires, take your pick)

This path leads to more people getting sick and many more people dying because of economic inequality, climate change, white supremacy and a pandemic.

Until… it all gets to be too much for the majority who will begin a revolution. A geo-polticidal crisis in the same lines as the ones we seem to face every 80 or so years (think WWI/Great Depression/WWII about 80 years ago). This is a repeating cycle of history.

We can make the choice to be better and care for each other, not just in the face of the pandemic. But in all things.

We can adopt policies that redistribute wealth more equitably.

No one needs billions, it is a slap in the face of the inherent dignity of human beings for millions upon millions to suffer so that Jeff Bezos can fly to “space” or dismantle historic bridges for his mega-yacht.

We can actually make meaningful steps towards addressing climate change.

We can decarbonize, actually turn to green energy and attend to the earth’s well being.

We can dismantle white supremacy.

We can root it out in every place, and insist on making space for those suffering under its thumb.

We can empower society to weather the still-to-come waves of COVID that will keep hitting us until we vaccinate the whole world.

This means knowing that we will get small as the waves hit, and expand as they subside. Things like Universal Basic Income, expansion of public universal healthcare and its institutions, direct support for more equitable and affordable housing will be our way through.

There is a pathway out of the problems that we face. The question is, are we willing to take it?

The historian in me says that we are doomed to repeat history.

But the Pastor in me has hope that we will find a different way.

covid-19, Sermon, Theology & Culture

Following Jesus into the Deep

February 6, 2022 The Rev. Erik Parker Leave a comment

Luke 5:1-11
… For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

Last weekend, we decided to take drive across town to check in on the lot, or ditch patch as we call it, where our new house is going to be built this year. On our way, we drove through downtown and encountered a large collection of tractor trailer, pick up trucks and SUVs with Canadian flags adorning them and lots of “freedom convoy” labels. It was a some unexpected drama that has captured our national attention. Last week, as Jesus confronted us as we were tired and edgy, he reminded us that no matter the messes that human communities find themselves in, that God continues to come and meet God’s people. This journey through this season after Epiphany has taken us from the the banks of the river Jordan, to the wedding at Cana, to the synagogue in Nazareth for the past two weeks. But now we end up in the boat with Jesus and his disciples.

Today, the drama of this scene in Jesus’ story can be lost on us prairie dwellers. Last week Jesus was almost thrown off a cliff, while today he seems to go for a gentle boat ride. We are used to snow plows and SUVs, to eating beef, pork and chicken. And so when we hear that Jesus gets Simon to take his boat out and fish, and then Jesus provides overflowing nets, it seems like a nice story, a quaint story about Jesus making life a little easier for Simon and his companions. But dig a little deeper, and we begin to see that this is not just about Jesus providing fish. Today, Jesus is just as offensive as he was a week ago, and today, Jesus isn’t the only one in danger of losing his life.

As Jesus begins to get more famous, people begin to follow him around. The crowds press in on him to hear what he is saying. And this time they press him right to the edge of the Lake, so when Jesus can walk no further, he hops in a boat, into Simon who will later be named Peter, and continues to teach. Simon has caught nothing and is going home for the day. Yet when Jesus hops in his boat, he obligingly takes him out a few feet. Simon would have seen that Jesus was an important teacher with all these people coming to hear what Jesus had to say.

Yet, when the sermon ends, Jesus doesn’t ask to go back to shore, instead he tells Simon to go out into the middle of lake. The preacher in the boat tells Simon the experienced fisherman to do exactly what fisherman don’t do. They do not go out on the lake in the middle of the day. They fish at night, near the shore by lantern light. This is how they have fished for generations. Simon is not impressed with this teacher fellow sitting in his boat. In fact he begins to refuse,

“Look teacher, we have been fishing all night, our nets need repair, maybe you should stick to speeches and let us do the fishing” Simon has just met Jesus, but it doesn’t take him long to use that impulsive mouth that he will become known for. But then, Simon changes his mind part way through his refusal and says, “Well I guess it won’t hurt, so if you say so Jesus”.

We aren’t too different than Simon, we often wonder if God actually knows what is going on. Like Simon, we find it easy to stick to the routines and to stick to what we know. Even when sticking to the routines leaves us with empty nets. Yet, God is calling us away from the safety of the shore, out to the deep water, out the unknown.

The unknown is scary and terrifying. And these days we only have a certain level of tolerance for anything different, anything that demands something of us. The issue at the core of the freedom convoy and any protest against COVID-19 restrictions or mandates has often begun with the resistance to this calling into the unknown, the unfamiliar. Masks are uncomfortable. Staying home is boring and lonely and hard. Getting vaccinated might cause uncertainty.

But our resistance to the deep water, to following Jesus away from the shore, to allowing ourselves some discomfort comes at a cost. Sometimes it might be missed opportunities, as a church it could mean missing out on reaching new people in new ways, and as we are discovering during this pandemic… refusing to do that unexpected, unknown thing is resulting in more people getting sick, more ending up in the hospital and more people dying… all for the stated reasons of freedom, but for the real reason of being unwilling to be uncomfortable for a while or give up something of ourselves for the sake of our neighbour.

God’s call to the deep waters can feel so risky that we would rather starve doing what we know.

But with Jesus in his boat, Simon decided to listen to the teacher in the boat. And imagine his surprise as he lets down his nets into the deep water and then begins to haul them back in. The weight of the net pulling back more than Simon ever expected, maybe more than he had ever experienced. And Simon tries to the get the net — and all the fish — in the boat, there is so much that he must call to his friends, James and John before the nets break, and still there is so much fish that they both begin to sink. If there was excitement at catching a lot of fish, it would have disappeared when the boats began to sink, in the middle of lake. The wandering preacher might have guessed where the fish were, but it wasn’t going to do Simon any good, if he drowned first. And yet, they catch an abundance of fish that they had never seen before.

But fish isn’t Jesus purpose. Jesus has so much more in mind for Simon… And though Simon doesn’t feel worthy, Jesus speaks the words that angels have spoken to those being called by God into something new, time and time again, “Do not be afraid.”

Along with Simon, Jesus is calling us out to the deep water today. And today, that call seems as crazy to us as it did to Simon, who knew better than to go far from the shore. And yet, God is doing something totally unexpected. Something that does not make sense to us. God calls us to die. God calls us to die in the waters of Baptism… but the call does not stop in death. God also calls us out of our ruts, out of our routines, out of the water, out of death and into life.

To a people stuck in the ruts, in the routine of what is safe and known, Christ’s call to risk everything in the deep water seems like too much to ask. But there in the deep water, Christ is giving us life. Life in the form of fish for fisherman with nothing, and today, life for communities contending with far too much sickness and death, life for people who are feeling caged up and alone.

Out in those deep waters God calls to us from those first promises made to us at the font “By the baptism of his own death and resurrection, [God’s] beloved Son has set us free from the bondage to sin and death, and has opened the way to the joy and freedom of everlasting life”. Out of death, God brings life. Out of drowning in the deep waters of baptism, God forces the breath of life back into our lungs and joins us into a community of newly alive people.

Certainly our instinct is to resist this call, to push back against the dangers that we think we see and feel in the unknown, in the loss that we believe will come with giving something of ourselves.

But like with Simon, Jesus says, “Do not be afraid.”

Because we do not follow this call alone. We do not go out into the deep waters alone. We are not in this boat called the church all alone. Jesus is with us in the boat and Jesus has much bigger purposes for us. Jesus is preparing us things that entirely new.

We don’t know what is far from shore, what is out in the deep water, but Jesus does. Jesus knows where we need to go, and what path we need to follow. Jesus knows what must be done for the sake of a hungry and dying world.

So no, this story today is not a quaint story about a little boat ride and catching fish. It is about the fear and uncertainty that come with following Jesus, with stepping out of what is comfortable and known, of being willing to risk, to be uncomfortable, to give of ourselves.

But it also the story that always comes after, “Do not be afraid.”

It is the surprising story of God’s surprising abundance given for us, nets full of fish, salvation found in the waters of our baptism, new opportunities out in the deep water.

It is about following God’s call into unknown AND of God’s promise that wherever we God, Jesus is in this upside down boat with us.

covid-19, Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

February Blahs – Pastor Thoughts

February 6, 2022 The Rev. Erik Parker 1 Comment

Well, what a week!

The world is a topsy-turvy turmoil these days.

The freedom convoy rolled through town at the end of the week last week and then made its way to Ottawa, where protestors have taken up residence tormenting the poor folks living there in the name of some misguided sense of freedom.

One of our nation’s political leaders lost his job, but not the one most were thinking of.

Manitoba’s government is planning for the pandemic to be over in a few months, regardless of what doctors say.

A large apartment building burned down on our street (but not that close to us).

The Winter Olympics have begun!

And the Winnipeg Jets can’t stop losing while my Edmonton Oilers ended a long losing streak of their own with winning a streak!

Did I catch you up on the all the news?

Oh, and as you read this you might have just been digging out your driveway full of another snowfall. (I finally broke down and bought a snowblower 3 weeks ago…)

Also, I have a 26 day streak in Wordle going so far!

There seems to be a lot going on these days, in the news, on the TV, in pop culture, in politics and more.

Yet, even with all of that going on, I cannot help but feel the February blahs. Maybe you feel it too. All the positive steps towards a new “post-pandemic” way of life came crashing to a halt at Christmas, and since then it is has been hard to re-engage. I am looking forward to when we can gather again. I am looking forward to walking through the journey of faith with you. I am looking forward to the future. But these past weeks have felt like a deja vu of March/April 2020 but without the sourdough starters, family puzzle time and sense of coming together to support healthcare workers.

At our zoom clergy gathering this week, of all the things to be worried about, my colleagues were most concerned about tired and disengaging members. We were most concerned about our own tiredness and disengagement.

But there was one thing that lifted my spirits in an unexpected way this week. My annual report. Yes, seriously, writing my annual report. As I read my report on 2020 and then reflected on all that came to pass in 2021, it turned out that this past year in ministry was better than imagined:

We came together and created incredible worship despite difficult circumstances.
We gathered in-person for worship many times and shared in Baptism, Confirmation and the Lord’s Supper
We delivered sermons to shut-ins and seniors
We started some family ministry events
We had 4 sessions with small groups
We hosted programs and events for youth as young as grade 3 all the way to young adult
We started a committee to call all the members of the congregation
We started a meal team for The Urban
We had the choir sing and musicians play
We made the Free Press, the Globe and Mail and were featured on CBC, CTV and City News!

I know there was even more than that behind the scenes or things that I am forgetting.

But somehow in the midst of all the struggle we have endured, we actually did an incredible amount of new and exciting things. I was reminded of the incredible ministry that we have strived to do together, despite all the odds.

Of all the things that have been seemingly bringing me down lately (except that Oilers winning streak!), reviewing what we had done together this past year lifted my spirits tremendously.

But more importantly, they reminded me just how the Spirit has been at work among us. God has been doing unexpected and amazing things in our community. And by the Holy Spirit’s leading, we have been making a difference in our world. That hardly seems possible when I think of all the obstacles in our way.

I am so grateful for all of you. I am grateful for the ways in which so many have stepped back to keep each other safe, and have stepped forward to lead and drive our ministry. And most of all, I am grateful to be able to see that despite the obstacles that appear before us, God has been leading us in new ways to new life!