Terrible things are happening in the world, and as sometimes it is more than I can take in, I am seeking refuge this morning in hope.

To live in hope is to thirst. To thirst for justice, for mercy, for healing, for welcome, for peace. To hope is to build up, not tear apart. St. Augustine wrote that the courage to challenge injustice was a daughter of hope. To live in hope, then, is to stretch my heart wide enough to encompass the needs of my neighbors as my own, to feed the hungry, house the homeless and welcome the refugee. “We are workers,” said St. Oscar Romero, “We are prophets of a future not our own.” 

Fear is the antithesis of hope. Fear seethes and rails. It preaches ruin and destruction; it deafens us to reality. Fear is a failure to see what is possible, a failure to see the worth and dignity of everyone I encounter. Yet fear clings like tar, I confess I cannot easily shake it off.  There is a reason, I suspect, that the phrase “Do not be afraid!” appears again and again in the Gospels. To live in hope is to turn down the volume on the rhetoric that demonizes others and tune in to the voices that call us to companion each other, as Jesus has promised to accompany us.

 Hope is not fragile, nor is it always gentle. Sometimes it is a bit gritty. But it is always a grace. Thanks be to God.

 Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson

Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Drawn to love?

Matthew 23:36-8 
 
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’” This is the first and greatest commandment.”
 
In his answer Jesus concentrated all the questions about what true obedience to God might look like. Love God with everything you have, and all that you are. Worship, adoration, praise and thanksgiving are the first response of our hearts to God’s gracious love and faithful mercy. To love God is to give God that space in our lives where we grow and are transformed by the Spirit who pours God’s love into our hearts. We love because God first loved us —the initiative always comes from God. Our response is loving gratitude and faithful obedience to that love. 
 
Matthew 23:39-40 
 
“And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
 
Jesus links love for God and love for neighbor. And don’t bother trying to define neighbor to make it manageable and convenient. The Good Samaritan story put an end to all that moral squirming. To love God, we must love those made in God’s image, and in whom we meet those Jesus called sisters and brothers. For as much as you love the poor, hungry, hurting, lonely, scared, struggling person you come across on each day’s journey, to that extent you love Jesus, and show your love for God to be genuine, because costly, generous because a sign of the grace that has helped us.
 
John 13:34-35 
 
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 
 
The commandment is new because it has a new point of reference; “As I have loved you.” Jesus is the exemplar of what Christian love looks like, how it speaks and acts. Jesus had just washed the feet of each disciple. This wasn’t an act of passive humility; this was Jesus’ answering all the earlier arguments about who was the greatest. The one who serves, who takes care of others’ needs, they are the greatest. That kind of servant love is the logo of the Christian community. Wear it— with humility!
 
Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Luke 2:17 “When they had seen him they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child. And all who heard it were amazed…”

There’s quite a lot of amazement that goes on in the Christmas story. Mary’s annunciation; Joseph’s dream and the angel; shepherds ambushed by God’s choir; the shepherds’ gawking and gossip. And those who heard them were amazed. Why not? Angels and heavenly choirs, a baby supposed to be the Messiah, a young woman both scared and honored above all women. The vocabulary of Christmas is full of big words – Jesus, Immanuel, Bethlehem, signs and prophets, child, manger, shepherds, glory, joy, peace, God’s favour, spreading the word. And it’s our story, and these words are our words, the vocabulary of God’s gift beyond all our telling. 

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

When the song of the angels is stilled,

when the star in the sky is gone,

when the kings and princes are home,

when the shepherds are back with their flock,

the work of Christmas begins:

to find the lost,

to heal the broken,

to feed the hungry,

to release the prisoner,

to rebuild the nations,

to bring peace among others,

to make music in the heart.

Howard Thurman

The long journey from

Bethlehem to Calvary:

the Light of the World.

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson

Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace!

Hail the Sun of Righteousness!

Light and life to all he brings,

Risen with healing in his wings.

Mild, He lays his glory by;

Born that man no more may die;

Born to raise the sons of earth;

Born to give them second birth.

Hark! The herald angels sing

Glory to the new-born King.

This is a mosaic of biblical phrases from Isaiah, Malachi, the Gospel of John, Romans, Philippians, and of course, Luke’s choir of angels. The great Messianic titles come at the climax of the carol, drawing our eyes to behold his glory, full of grace and truth. The eternal glory of the Son is laid aside in obedience to God.  And notice, that word ‘risen’. It refers to the rising of the sun of hope and the in-breaking light and life of God. But ‘risen’ also anticipates the resurrection when “Light and life to all He brings.” But first, Bethlehem. Advent is about a child being born; Charles Wesley tells you why. Three times. Born! Glory indeed!

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned."
Isaiah 9:2

There are different kinds of darkness within which we sometimes have to walk. Many of them can feel like living in a land overshadowed by despair, anxiety, grief or loneliness. These bring an accompanying loss of motivation and appetite for life. Often life in our world these days is like walking in darkness, living under deep shadows of foreboding and uncertainty. Advent interrupts our pessimism. Isaiah declares the coming of the light of God’s coming! Against a horizon of despair, hope dawns, as God says “Let there be light!” God is on the move and hope is rising.

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders.”   

 Isaiah 9:6a

I can’t read these words without hearing them set to Handel’s music with its outspokenly joyous chorus! It’s an irresistible Advent earworm! These words were first spoken to broken- hearted people who could see no good future. Government was Empire, and Empire was about force, control and loss of freedom. The sign of the newborn child was God’s promise of a different future. This Advent, when you celebrate the birth of the Christ child, and open yourself again to the gift of God’s Son, do so looking forward to the coming of God’s Kingdom, in God’s good time.

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Advent

Advent means
we are waiting for something,
we are to expect
something good and up-lifting
to make us feel better.
And why not?
We struggle so, 
and we only want
peace, security and even
a little happiness.
We dream of it—
like a lost treasure
in an empty desert.

Then, in the very dying of the Autumn Season,
along comes Advent
with candles, prayers, songs
and promises
of new possibilities.
And, all tingling
with excitement and expectancy,
we are seduced
into hoping once again.

Oh—thank God
for Advent—
and its perennial promise—
pointing to a light
which never dies.

Edwina Gateley

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

John 18:37, "Yes, I am a king."

 
Christmas is coming. It's been twenty-eight weeks of "ordinary time" since the church celebrated Pentecost on May 19, and next Sunday December 1 we pivot to a new liturgical year with the sacred season of Advent. But not yet. We have one more piece of business on this last Sunday of the old year.
 
In the wake of the American presidential election, this week we celebrate "Christ the King." Such explicitly political language makes many Christians understandably nervous. Nonetheless, the language of kingship is deeply embedded in the New Testament. Jesus himself, his first followers, and most notably his detractors, all used the language of kingship to describe who he was and what he did. People remembered Jesus in various ways. He was a carpenter. He was a healer and a miracle worker. A teacher. A renegade rabbi who broke purity laws. He was a prophet who defended the vulnerable and the outcasts. He was a shepherd, as we see in the earliest Christian art. He also claimed to be a king with a kingdom.
 
When we begin Advent next week, lowly Mary's Magnificat will celebrate how the birth of Jesus signaled that God would "bring down rulers from their thrones." In Mark's gospel, the very first words spoken by Jesus announced that "the kingdom of God is at hand." In Matthew, the Persian magi inquire about "the king of the Jews." In Luke, Jesus was dragged before Pilate for three political charges: "We found this fellow subverting the nation, opposing payment of taxes to Caesar, and saying that He Himself is Christ, a King."
 
A POEM FOR THE FEAST OF CHRIST THE KING
 
See how this infant boy
lifted himself down
into his humble crèche
and laid his tender glove of skin
against splintered wood—
found refuge in a rack
of straw—home
that chilly dawn,
in sweetest silage,
those shriven stalks.
This outcast king lifted
himself high upon his savage cross,
extended the regal banner
of his bones, draping himself
upon his throne—his battered feet,
his wounded hands not fastened
there by nails but sewn
by the strictest thorn of love
 
Pamela Cranston

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation
 
 

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ewB0WL3bN

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation