Rev. Susan Lukey

Passage: Acts 21:26-22:3 & Acts 22:22-29    

  Description: I don’t know if I would have chosen to be a Christian in the first century. I don’t know if I would have had the courage to claim Jesus as my Saviour and Lord in a context where, like Paul, I might have been jailed or martyred for my faith. I think about that sometimes. I think about the many times through the last 2,000 years when being a Christian, or a particular kind of Christian, meant putting everything on the line, including one’s life. I think of countries today where people of faith, be they Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Sikh or Hindu, are persecuted and driven from their homes because of how they worship. Would I be ready and willing to claim my faith in a situation where I could lose everything? I hope so. I want to say that Yes, I would. But I wonder. Living in 21st century North America as a Christian doesn’t give me much to judge myself by. It is relatively easy to be a Christian in this context. While some people might give me a strange look if I say that I’m Christian and go to church, and some might discount what I have to say because I am a Christian minister, I still have every ability to head to church without any worries. I’m not sneaking out of my house and watching over my shoulder to see if anyone is following me as I make my way to church on Sunday or any other day of the week. So I wonder, could I hold on to my faith in a situation of persecution? It is what fascinates me about the apostle Paul and the other believers whose stories we are discovering in the book of Acts. Paul went from hunting down Christians to throw them in prison to becoming a Christian and being jailed and later martyred for his faith in Jesus. Other believers were jailed for their faith as well, sometimes stepping up to be arrested while Paul snuck out the back door and moved on to the next town or city.

Passage: Acts 11:1-18    

  Description: I hate it! I just absolutely hate it when I catch myself judging someone because of their looks, their way of speaking, or their approach. It happened this week --probably more than once, but the once that stood out was when I was listening to the radio. I was appreciating what the person was saying but I found myself thinking – what he has to say would be better received if he didn’t have that accent. Oh, I hate it when I do that. Judge someone for just being who they are. But we human beings are judgemental by nature. Partly it is a survival skill. We judge others in order to determine if they are the enemy that we need to be aware of. And there are people, abusive, violent, deceptive people, that we should be very wary of. But this judgement thing has got out of hand. Jesus knew that when he told people, “Do not judge so that you are not judged.” Jesus modeled a spiritual practice of accepting each person in front of him for who they were, welcoming them, seeing beyond outer appearances and stereotypes, rejecting societal norms & connecting compassionately & unconditionally with the person. In today’s reading from the book of Acts, Peter is challenged to drop his judgments, even the judgments made on the basis of the Jewish law code by which he had lived his whole life.

Passage: 2 Peter 1:12-19    

  Description: Who is Jesus for you? Who is Jesus in our faith? These may seem like obvious questions, but the answers, when we pause to reflect, take us deeper into our Christian faith and into the practice of that faith. In this Advent season of waiting once again to celebrate the arrival of God’s beloved son, we prepare our hearts by asking the question of ourselves and of each other – Who is Jesus? The image we are offered this week in scripture and through the Advent candle lighting ceremony is that of Jesus as the Morning Star. But what exactly does that mean? The image of Jesus as the morning star comes from the 2nd Letter of Peter. It is also used in the book of Revelation. Jesus is our morning star. In 2nd Peter, we are invited to anticipate the dawning of a new day when the morning star rises in our hearts. We know that moment, don’t we? As prairie people, with the wonderfully broad eastern sky, we have watched and waited for the sunrise, ready to welcome a new day. It is those moments just before the sunrise which are so magical and mystical. The sky has that special colour – more blue than black – as the light of the sun begins to warm the sky long before it breaks the horizon. The stars shimmer – and there is that one star, the morning star, that is especially bright. Actually, the morning star is the planet Venus – a mere 330 million kilometres from us, much closer than any of the nearest stars. It is Venus that announces the dawn and welcomes the sun, sparkling brightly as we watch and wait for the sun to return to us in its orbit, warming the earth and brightening our homes. It is such a powerful image - the morning star. We all have those times in our lives when we wait for the dawn, times when life is shadowed, depressing and filled with gloom. Grief, depression, tragedy, loss of a job, divorce, the economy, loss of good health or mobility – there are many circumstances that leave us unable to see what is good in life, what is joyful. It can feel as if a shadow has descended over us, and it is hard to believe that there will be hope and love and joy ever again in our lives.

Passage: Psalms 139:1-13 & 1 Corinthians 13:12    

  Description: The story of the Bible is a story of relationship. It is a story of God’s relationship with humanity and with all of creation. It is a love story. The Bible is filled with stories, chosen by faithful people, to share their understandings and experiences of God. It is offered in many different voices, in many different genres of literature. The stories each come out of a particular context, in a particular time in history, and the portrayal of God offered is shaped by that time and context. It is not something dictated by God for us, but rather it is a human document, made sacred by its use, that reveals to us how people have understood and experienced God through the ages. As we study scripture and explore the stories, as we discuss scripture together, we receive God’s voice, God’s message. What is at the core of scripture, throughout both testaments is this: God is love and God chooses to be in relationship with humankind. God chooses to be in relationship with us and we choose to be in relationship with each other in this congregation. Faith is rooted in relationship – and that has been our theme this fall.

Passage: John 15:1-17    

  Description: Now there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, for we are one in Christ! I think it is hard for us, in the 21st century to understand just how radical those words would have been in the 1st century, when Paul was writing to the church at Galatia. These are transformative words also meant to challenge us as we follow the Way. Today we are coming to the communion table to share the bread and the cup. Imagine what this would have been like for the followers of Jesus, 2,000 years ago. First of all, they shared this meal every time they gathered. And they actually sat down together at a big table. Everyone brought some bread (flat bread) from home and some wine, and it was all put on the table –like a potluck. All the wine was poured into a large bowl-like container – good and bad wine mixed together. All the bread heaped on one platter. Once the words, “This is my body; this is my blood; do this in remembrance of me,” were declared by the presider, everyone ate their fill. It wasn’t the little sip of juice and little piece of bread that we share. It was much more like our Soup & Bun or Simple Suppers. Everyone ate their fill. No one went home hungry. Those who had more, brought more, but everyone brought something. The commitment that followers of Jesus made to each other was that they would share everything in common so that no one was in need. They took care of each other! They committed their resources to one another. Now I want you to picture who was at that table. Jew and Gentile, Roman citizens and their slaves, men and women – all sitting together. This is the absolutely radical thing about the church of Jesus at its beginnings. At other tables in the Roman Empire at the time, these people would not sit together. Men and women, especially at Roman banquet tables normally would not be seated together. Men would have their own tables, and women would be set apart or doing the serving. Within Jewish households, the family would eat together, but out in public, men did not speak to or associate with women who they were not married to or related to. Similarly, slaves had their place in society, and did not share a meal with their masters. Jewish people and Gentile people would not interact, except for limited required transactions, such as paying taxes. Paul is writing to a church in the middle of Roman territory – the church in Galatia, in what is present day Turkey. Paul is telling them that once they are committed to following the Way of Jesus, like us, then all of those traditional cultural and religious boundaries are wiped away. Everyone sits at the same table together.