God is With Us or “What’s Next?”

Notes for a sermon preached at Holy Trinity Anglican Church,
Edmonton, Alberta, November 9, 2025
Texts: Hag 1:15b-2:9; Ps 145:1-5, 18-; 2 Th. 2:1-5, 13-17; Luke 20:27-38

In twenty-six years as a parish priest, I was only once involved in prison ministry. The man I was called to visit had asked to see an Anglican minister, which suggested to me that he might have some church background. What I found was a person who had been dragged to church as a child by abusive parents. He said, “I guess I’m Anglican—that’s what I was baptized,” but he knew next to nothing of the Christian faith and wasn’t even sure he believed there was a God. He told me he had decided that he needed “a faith,” a statement that raised so many questions I hardly knew where to begin. In many ways, his life had been a battlefield for over thirty years. And he was wondering “What’s next?”

It seems to me that this question relates in various way to all of today’s readings, to observances of Remembrance Day, and to our parish’s current situation.

When the Sadducees came to Jesus with a trick question about marriage in the resurrected life, their interest was not so much in getting a legal opinion, but in continuing their ongoing argument with other Jews over whether there is life after death. They would answer “What’s next?” by saying “nothing.” Dead is dead, and that’s that—a position which Jesus demolishes with an appeal to scripture: the patriarchs remain alive to God, so the question is simply foolish. “What’s next?”—life in the nearer presence of God.

Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, who were sure they knew what was next—Jesus was coming back any day now, and the delay was shaking their faith. He urged them to stand firm, living as if the day of the Lord had already arrived, giving glory to God who has sanctified them by the Spirit. “What’s next?”—life lived in the awareness of God’s presence in all things.

The prophet Haggai exhorted the returned exiles to get on with re-building the temple. Work had started, but they were dispirited and disorganized, and the new temple was unfinished. Life in the ruins of Jerusalem was nothing like they had dreamed it would be, maybe even far inferior to their existence in Babylon. “What’s next?” Why bother rebuilding the temple? Things were bad, and it didn’t seem that they were going to get any better. But the prophet told them that God was with them, and would be with them, and would give them prosperity in this place.

“What’s next?” In every case, we are assured that God is present and at work among his people, always leading them into new life, in this world and the next. I think of in-between times like this as “Holy Saturday experiences,” recalling the day between Cross and the Resurrection when Jesus’ disciples waited in fear, grief, and confusion behind closed doors for a future they could not begin to comprehend or foresee. But God was with them even on that darkest of days! Another writer has called such times the “Sacred In-Between,” saying this:

…what’s next will come. It always does. But who you’ll be when it comes, that’s what the in-between is shaping right now.[i]

This week we remember those who died in the wars of the past century, conflicts which overshadowed and profoundly shaped our country’s history. We sent men and women overseas to fight for “King and country,” often to die. In retrospect some of those battles were questionable, and some of the so-called sacrifices almost meaningless.

Veterans of various combats often came home to a hero’s welcome, but all too often that home had changed almost beyond recognition. War changes people—on both the battlefront and the home front. Many veterans of both wars bore scars of the battle in their psyches for the rest of their lives. And both world wars changed our society profoundly, sometimes for the good and sometimes not.

The difficult memories and the challenges our country faced in post-war times were tempered by our being on the winning side. But what happens on the other side? The reading from Haggai may help us understand.

For many years, the exiles in Babylon had lived with the knowledge of defeat and destruction. They had been sustained by the dream of their homeland, and the memory of Jerusalem’s lost glory. When they returned, reality did not match their dreams. The temple lay in ruins, the city walls were piles of rubble, and the people of the land seemed to have given up. As a line in the hymn “Abide with Me” says, “Change and decay in all around I see.”[ii] Defeat had become the people’s mindset. Is it any wonder they could not find the energy to rebuild the temple?

And then the prophet said to them:

…take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord; work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts, according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt. My spirit abides among you; do not fear.[iii]

“What’s next?”—a new temple, a fresh start, and new prosperity, for God is with them. It may not have been what they had been dreaming of for half a century, but it was where God had been leading them.

It’s easy to perceive God’s spirit among us when things are going well. When things are not going so well, during the muddy hell of World War I, or on the return to a defeated land, we may have a different awareness of God. The man I met at the jail was not sure he could believe in God, because his life had been a personal hell. Nonetheless, he was wondering if he did in fact believe, because he sometimes found himself praying to God for help. I wish I could tell you that his story ended as he prayed, but what was next for him was a court appearance. He was sentenced to time served in that province, but police from another province were waiting for him at the back of the courtroom to re-arrest him for other offences.

We need to remember, to know our story, and to understand how we got here. On Remembrance Day, we give thanks for our war dead who helped bring this story to where we are today. Nonetheless, we do not live in the remembered past, but in the often-uncertain present, in hope for the future, always asking God “What’s next?” Always we know that God’s answer—for the people of ancient Israel, for the earliest Christians, and for us today—is “I am with you.”

Holy Trinity is facing challenges in the months ahead. Clergy changes are always difficult, and the community is justified in asking “What’s next?” But the prophet’s words continue to ring true:

…take courage…; for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts

And the hymn continues,

“O thou who changest not, abide with me.”[iv]

God abides with us, in war and in peace, in victory and in defeat, in hardship and in prosperity, in times of change and in times of stability. May we always remain aware of God’s presence, ready to hear God’s call into the future waiting for us.

“What’s next?”

God is with us always. That’s what’s next.

Thanks be to God.

Amen

[i] Shawn C. Branch, https://shawnbranch.substack.com/p/the-sacred-in-between?triedRedirect=true

[ii] Henry Francis Lyte, vs. 2, line 3

[iii] Haggai 2:4b-5

[iv] Henry Francis Lyte, vs. 2, line 4

Post scripts:

  1. Holy Trinity is about to enter into an interim period, after the resignations of our Rector and her Associate.
  2. I was introduced to the idea of “Holy Saturday” experiences through “Between Cross and Resurrection: a Theology of Holy Saturday,” by Alan E. Lewis, Eerdmans, 2001.

Me too, Joe!

The news that Joe Biden, ex-President of the U.S.A., had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer hit close to home for me. There was a lot of doom-and-gloom reporting, which seemed to me to miss the mark.

I received a very similar diagnosis just over three years ago. After my annual physical, my family doctor ordered a number of routine tests, including the standard marker for prostate cancer, Prostate-Specific Antigen (aka PSA). Normal PSA is 6.5 or less, and mine turned out to be over 300. After a couple of scans, my doctor called me to come in and discuss things. It seemed that I almost certainly had prostate cancer, which appeared to have spread to many points on my bones. He referred me to a specialist, who immediately ordered a biopsy, which then confirmed the diagnosis. The biopsy was perhaps the most unpleasant episode in the whole story (don’t ask!)

There are a variety of treatments for this disease. If the cancer is confined to the prostate, surgery is the treatment of choice, perhaps followed by either chemotherapy, radiation, or both. If the cancer has spread to other places such as bones, there are other treatments available, depending on the actual type of the cancer. My variety is of the type that typically responds well to Androgen Deprivation Therapy (ADT), using drugs that suppress the body’s production of male hormones. Testosterone in particular provides fuel for the cancer’s growth.

I had a short course of radiation (5 sessions) to treat two of the larger bone metastases. This was pretty easy to bear, although the radiation oncologist I saw was the gloomiest of all the doctors I saw, giving me 3 years or 5 if I was lucky. (I’ll come back to that).

The actual course of ADT is pretty easy to deal with. I get a shot in my belly every six months, and take a pill once a day. The shot suppresses hormone production, and the pill (as I understand it) enhances resistance to hormones that might still be floating around. I had a bit of a reaction to the pill — an unsightly rash on my scalp, causing me to lose most of whatever hair I had at the top. It passed, and some of the hair has grown back.

What has been the upshot of this treatment? Four months after the initial diagnosis, my PSA had dropped to around 8. Three months later, in September 2022, my test results said <0.1, which means it’s undetectable. It has stayed there ever since. That’s as good as that gets. Adding to it was a follow-up bone scan in November 2023, which found that almost the spots on my bones had disappeared — a “dramatic reversal” was the radiologist’s comment. Last fall, my urologist said that my cancer is “deeply suppressed.” He didn’t say “in remission,” but that seems to me to be close enough for all reasonable purposes.

The doctor who gave me 3 years or so to live was wrong, thanks be to God. It’s now over 3 years since I saw him, and I’m doing fine. I have heard reports from other men on the same treatment regime, many of whom are also doing fine, some after 15 years or more.

The specific treatment I’m on only became generally available about 6 years ago, so I’m benefiting from the continued advancement of medical knowledge. Many types of cancer used to be short-term death sentences, but people are living happy and productive lives much longer than could have been imagined a few decades ago.

Joe Biden’s cancer is more advanced than mine was at diagnosis, but I believe my story and those of many others give reason for hope. It is said that more men die with prostate cancer than die of it. I’m hoping that will be true for me, and also for Mr. Biden.

There are naturally some mildly bothersome effects of my treatment. They’re a bit personal, but suffice it to say that it pushes the male body back to pre-puberty conditions. The most obvious is the loss of body hair, which curiously does not include facial hair. My beard is more or less as it was before, if a bit grayer. (I am almost 77, after all!). It this is what it takes to stay alive, I’m OK with it.

For me, the important thing is to greet each new day as a gift, trying as much as possible to keep active mentally, spiritually, and physically. The last one is a bit of a challenge, due to an arthritic hip which predates the cancer. I’m probably not a candidate for a hip replacement, because the cancer damaged the femur below the affected hip. So it goes!

The other annoying thing is that I can’t travel outside Canada. Because I was diagnosed with metastatic cancer, no insurer will give me travel insurance. The irony is that I traveled many times without giving any thought to such insurance, thinking I didn’t need it. Now that I know I would need it, I can’t get it!

I have no idea what causes cancer, but what I do know is that early detection is hugely important. Regular screening by your doctor is vital in this regard, and it troubles me that many people (about 1 in 5) do not have access to a family physician, and often don’t get the early detection and treatment that they need. My wife and I were fortunate to find an excellent doctor who was taking new patients when we relocated to Edmonton. Others are not so lucky, sad to say.

And now for a political comment, directed mostly to the province of Alberta: our current government has been at war with the health care system, including the medical profession, for as long as it has been in power. This is shameful and dangerous behaviour, leading to the deterioration of care across the board. Our current premier says she is fixing the system by carving it up into subsections. I don’t understand how a major top-down re-organization helps the folks who are not getting the care they need. Fix things at the bottom — starting with support for family doctors, nurses, associated professionals, and all the people on the ground who make our health care system work.

If you’ve read this far, more power to you! Share it with your friends, especially the male ones. As the old radio show theme song said,
“Keep happy! Keep healthy! To heck with being wealthy!”

Cheers,

Robin

Come Out!

Notes for a sermon preached at Holy Trinity Anglican Church (Strathcona), Edmonton, on June 1, 2025. Text: John 17:20-26 – Easter 7, Year C

Thirty-eight years ago today, Edmonton was in a celebratory mood, after the Oilers won the Stanley Cup on home ice. The street party on Jasper Avenue went on for hours, trapping some friends who had come from Saskatoon for another event. They had parked their car near All Saints Cathedral, right on Jasper. They sat there for a while.

The event they had come for was an ordination at All Saints, when Archbishop Kent Clarke ordained a priest and three deacons, one of whom was me. The ordination took place on the seventh Sunday of Easter, the Sunday we are observing today. My family and friends and I had reason to celebrate, although our celebrations were a bit more muted than the near-chaos on the streets.

Looking back at that day, I realize that I don’t remember much of it, except for a few odd details. What I do know is that the Gospel lesson read that night was taken from the same chapter as the selection we just heard. John 17, known as Jesus’ “High-Priestly Prayer”, is spread over the three years of the Lectionary. The Prayer is at the end of the Farewell Discourse, after the Last Supper, immediately before the Passion. As John tells it, these are the last words in Jesus’ earthly ministry. As his time draws to its end, Jesus first prays for his own “glorification,” going on to pray for his disciples, that they will be protected from evil and sanctified in truth. Finally, in today’s lesson, he prays “…on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.”

This passage has often been used as the Gospel lesson for services of Christian Unity, as churches from different traditions gather to pray that we may be one. In my University years, in the first excitement of the ecumenical movement after Vatican II, many of my Christian friends were running around proclaiming that organic unity was just around the corner. I wish it were so, but historic change usually takes a lot longer than 50 or 60 years. Churches don’t change easily! In recent decades we have entered full communion with other denominations, all taking years of talk and prayer, and those full communion declarations are only half-steps toward visible unity.

However …

One of the things I have observed since June 1, 1987, is that while churches may have erected barriers between themselves and others, those walls often vanish when we seek to serve the wider community. Time does not permit me to elaborate on the many examples in have in mind. Suffice it to say that Churches which have deep differences in doctrine and worship often find themselves much more united when they are called to do things like feed the hungry, care for the homeless, and advocate for people on society’s margins. Getting outside our church buildings brings us together in ways that inviting people to worship with us does not. Shared worship is valuable in itself, but I believe that it is an act with a wider purpose – calling on all God’s people to follow Jesus in the world.

Look over to your right, at the second stained glass window from the front. The image in the central panel is a rendering of William Holman Hunt’s 1854 painting “The Light of the World.” It was inspired by the text of Revelation 3:20: “Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.” One of the notable features is that there is no door handle on the outside. Jesus cannot enter unless someone inside opens the door.

Shortly after Pope Francis died, I read a story allegedly dating from the conclave which elected him. It seems that Cardinal Bergoglio, as he was then, preached a short homily to the assembled cardinals, referring to this same image. He suggested that it could be viewed in another way: Jesus, the Light of the World, is inviting people huddled behind locked doors and closed minds to come out and share in his ministry – to come out into the world, to be light-bearers with him amid all the world’s strife and needs. In this view, Jesus is not saying “Let me in,” but “Come out!” The story went on to say that it may have been this homily that helped Cardinal Bergoglio become Pope Francis. I believe his ministry shows how much importance he gave to this message.

While it is sometimes comforting to shut ourselves into our safe spaces (which we absolutely do need!), it is important to remember that the holy havens to which we retreat are not the only places, or even the main places, where the church’s mission is fulfilled. The gathered church is like a ship in harbor, doing little as it remains there. It must eventually set sail to carry its cargo across the open seas. Jesus prays for those who will follow him into those wider places (his disciples) and then for those who believe in him through the disciples’ words – US! – for protection, for unity, and for the bonds of love, which bear us up as we venture into the world beyond these walls. As we go, we are to shed the light of Christ in all places.

As Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount:

‘You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.’                                                                                       (Matthew 5:14-16)

When the Oilers beat the Flyers 38 years ago, people felt the need to get out to share their joy, to celebrate with others their faith in their hockey heroes. That’s one kind of celebration (and a pretty good one!), but we Christians have something more to share. We are called to share in the joy of the Resurrection of Christ, which calls us out of our safe places to share the Good News with the wider world.

And how do we share that joy? How are we to be the light of the world? We could, of course, buy an amplifier and shout over the crowds on Whyte Avenue. Some have done that, but it seems to me to be self-defeating, shedding more heat than light. Instead, we should share our joy and light by being joy and light for others. That joy and light takes different forms for different people at different times. For the hungry, it is food. For those who mourn, it is comfort. For the lost, it is a helping hand, a guiding presence. For the lonely, it is a friendly presence. All of these and others are ways to shed God’s light into a world which so often seems plunged into darkness.

So, I believe the question for each of us today is this:

How am I light for other people, and
        How do I share Resurrection joy with them?

Friends, let us come out of our safe places.

Let us come out and spread Christ-light wherever we go.

Let us come out and be the Church,
doing God’s holy work among God’s people.

May it be so.

The Hardest Part of Following Jesus?

Notes for a sermon at Holy Trinity Anglican Church, Edmonton, Alberta
February 23, 2025
Texts: Genesis 45:3-11, 15; Luke 6:27-38                           

Families are wonderful, until they’re not! Families have great power to provide loving care and nurture. But there is a downside: they also have the power to inflict enormous hurt upon their members. The high expectations we place on families means that when they fail, they fail badly. The same can be said for churches, the difference being that we can choose our church community, but usually have no choice in belonging to a family. Hurt caused within a family is uniquely devastating to the one sinned against.

Today’s lesson from Genesis is the climax of a story that begins with a massive wrong done to one family member by other members. It began when Joseph’s older brothers were well and truly fed up with him, their father’s favorite and dreamer of troubling dreams, so they planned to be rid of him. Although they did not kill him as they originally intended, he ended up being sold into slavery in Egypt.

We have to fast forward our story for some time, maybe decades, to get to today’s reading. (See Genesis chapters 37 – 43 for the back-story.)

By the time of today’s reading, a famine has spread across all of Egypt and the neighbouring countries. Jacob has sent his ten older sons to Egypt to look for food, because they have heard that Egypt has sufficient stores to feed themselves. What they do not know is that their younger brother had risen to become the second-in-command to Pharaoh, and was responsible for the prudent planning that saved the Egyptians from starvation.

Joseph recognizes the brothers when they come into his presence, but they don’t know who he is. He was a boy of seventeen when he was taken, and years have passed. He might have looked vaguely familiar, but they certainly wouldn’t have expected to see their brother dressed as a high official. It fell to Joseph to make the connection, to reveal his identity to his brothers, who reacted in dismay and fear. Joseph! The brother they had conspired against, now in a position to pay them back. And here’s where the story takes its decisive turn: Joseph is not angry and vengeful, but asks after his father, and calls them to him. He sends them back to bring his father and his brother Benjamin, promising them food, land, and livelihood in Egypt.

Although the word “forgive” doesn’t appear in the text, Joseph forgave his brothers, saying that God had brought him to this place to be a blessing both to the people of Egypt and to his own people. Forgiveness changed the story beyond imagining. It’s easy to see the story taking a different turn. What if Joseph had harbored anger in his heart throughout those years? Thoughts of hatred and vengeance might have ruled his life. At the very least, he would have sent them back to their father empty-handed. At worst? Let’s not go there! We could easily understand a story which went that way, but that way was not God’s purpose. God had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that a great people would come from their line. Joseph became God’s unexpected human agent in keeping that promise alive.

Rather than lashing out at the brothers who had sinned against him, Joseph displayed the kind of behaviour Jesus held up to his disciples in the second two parts of the “Sermon on the Plain” in Luke’s Gospel. In the NRSV, these sections are titled “Love for Enemies” and “Judging Others.” The commands we read there are almost the same as we find in the “Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew (Matt 5 – 7), with only a few changes in wording.

What Jesus tells his disciples – tells us – is that the kind of behaviour the world has come to expect is not how we are to act. Calls to love your enemies and turn the other cheek are objects of scorn from others, but Jesus’ call is based on love. God loves his whole creation: the good and the bad together. Jesus calls us to act accordingly, regarding all others as God regards them. Other people may hurt us, and the world around may expect us to seek vengeance, but Jesus said:

Instead, love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.

Friends, nobody said that following Jesus would be easy. In fact, it can be very difficult. As G.K. Chesterton wrote:

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting.
It has been found difficult; and left untried.

The call to forgive may be the very hardest of Jesus’ hard sayings. I know this personally, and I suspect many of you here today know it too. It’s all too tempting not to forgive, to dwell on past hurts – sometimes long past! – and to consider how you might get back at the other. But as it has been said:

Bearing a grudge is like drinking poison,
and waiting for the other person to die.

If I nurse a long-held grudge, it hurts no-one but me. On the other hand, forgiving the other is a healing act, even when there is no possibility of letting them know of our forgiveness. By letting go of past pain, we move towards the healing that is God’s desire for all people. We can not change another person, but by the grace of our loving God, we can certainly change ourselves. If there is an opportunity to tell the other of our forgiveness, there may well be an opening to healing that relationship.

We can’t change the past. It’s over and done. But we can change the way the past holds on to us. But forgiving is not easy. Henri Nouwen wrote this:

Maybe the reason it seems hard for me to forgive others is that I do not fully believe that I am a forgiven person. If I could fully accept the truth that I am forgiven and do not have to live in guilt or shame, I would really be free. My freedom would allow me to forgive others seventy times seven times. By not forgiving, I chain myself to a desire to get even, thereby losing my freedom. [1]

Forgiving begins at home, in our own hearts, in seeking to see how God’s love may move us towards God’s ideal for us.

Turning back to Joseph, he likely had much time to ponder how his life had turned out, seeing how God was at work, leading Joseph to do good where he had been planted. He probably also had time to reflect on his youthful behaviour that had led his brothers to hate him, leading him to the repentance and forgiveness of himself that made today’s story possible. His insight about God’s purpose in leading his brothers to him was both sudden, and long-prepared.

Did he expect to see his brothers and his father again? We can’t answer that, but we can see how his years in Egypt made it possible for him to forgive them absolutely.

This was God’s work, leading Joseph to reach out in love to his long-lost family, forgiving them, welcoming them, making them part of his world once more.

Friends, let us strive to forgive, setting the past aside, not forgetting it, but not being bound by past hurts. Let us seek only to heal, building and re-building the family of God. In this way, God’s great love may become the basis of all our relationships, in our families, in our churches, and in the world.

May it be so.

  • [1] Henri Nouwen, The Road to Daybreak, Penguin Random House 1990

A special anniversary

A short reflection on living with cancer.

A few days ago I realized that the day was a kind of anniversary. Three years before, I had received a diagnosis of prostate cancer. One doctor said that I would have about three to five years left. Well, three years have passed, and I’m still here, still going reasonably strong. I am profoundly grateful for every day I am alive, the more so when some medical people said it was very unlikely.

My treatment has been state-of-the-art, almost totally medication-based and non-invasive. My PSA (The basic diagnostic test) level has been <0.1 since Sept. 2022, which really means it’s undetectable. Normal is 6.5 or lower: when I was diagnosed its was over 300. A follow-up bone scan last fall showed that the bone metastases they had found in the spring of 2022 had almost completely resolved. My current doctor has never used the word “remission,” but says that my cancer is “deeply suppressed.” The side-effects of my medication are a bit personal, but the one thing that has caused a life-style change is reduced energy. I tire easily, and tend not to be much use in the evening. I can live with that, although it sometimes irritates my dearly beloved when I doze off while we’re watching TV.

So what do I take from this?

First, more than ever before in my life, I am able to see every day as a gift. If one’s man’s opinion was that I wouldn’t be here today, that his opinion. I’m here!

Second, I am really grateful for the advances in medical science that have made this possible. A good friend died of the same disease right around the time I was diagnosed. He was originally given 6 months, and lasted 6 years. The drugs I am taking were not available when he was diagnosed. If they had been, he might still be here.

Third, but not least, I will forever be grateful for the support of friends and family as I dealt with the uncertainty of the situation. It’s still uncertain, of course, but I have much more confidence in the future now than I did three years ago.

Thank God for all of this — friends, family, medical science, every new day. Thanks be to God!

Symbol and Sacrament

Notes for a sermon preached at Holy Trinity Anglican Church (Strathcona), Edmonton, August 11, 2024. Text: John 6:35, 41-51

I invite you take a moment to look around this church, identifying some of the symbols around you, and perhaps considering what they stand for.

[Call for what people saw, and how they understand them.]

Symbols are important. We find them everywhere, ranging from the very commonplace to the profound.

Open a hymn book, and you find pages and pages of symbols, both musical notation and printed text. The hymns they represent come to life only when we sing them. There is no one right or wrong way to interpret these symbols, which depend on the readers’ and performers’ points of view and abilities.

You will very often see an important symbol at public buildings—the Canadian flag. The flag represents our country, but its function is to point to the realities of place and people. The flag’s meaning depends on the viewer’s point of view—how we understand and relate to our country, its land, its people, and its history.

There are many crosses around this building, all pointing to the story of salvation as we learn it from the Gospels. Once again, we understand the Cross in many and varied ways, none of which are the ultimate answer.

Symbols are like sign posts by the road, pointing away from themselves to something else. But some symbols are more than that—they not only point to, but also embody the reality of the thing they are pointing to. In Church talk, we call these symbols “sacraments.”

We are gathered here today to participate in what for many is the central symbol of Christian life. We are here to celebrate the Eucharist, the sacrament in which believers share in the body and blood of our crucified saviour. We are here to partake of the Bread of Life, the very being of Jesus.

The language we hear throughout Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel, the so-called “Bread of Life Discourse,” is very clearly symbolic. Jesus is not bread in the ordinary sense. He does not give his physical body at every Eucharistic celebration, but what we share in this symbolic act, from the opening greeting to the dismissal, is the fullness of his life, the essence of the Holy, his loving sacrifice on the cross, and the glory of his Resurrection.

What we share at the altar is a bit of bread and a sip of wine, but it is far more than that to those who see with the eyes of the spirit. I can’t pretend to know what motivates anyone to come forward for Communion—the reasons are as many as there are recipients. But what I believe deeply is that the Holy Spirit draws every one of us to this place, enlivens our hearts and our minds and our spirits with the written and spoken word, and leads us to partake of the bread and wine of the Eucharist.

What we do is symbolic, but the reality behind it is far more than our rituals. The reality is that Jesus is truly present among us, giving of his very self, the Bread of [Eternal] Life.

John’s account of the Last Supper does not have an institution narrative like the other three, focusing instead of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet, given as one of the signs of participation in Jesus’ work in this world. Taking the place of an institution story we have the Bread of Life Discourse, an extended narrative on the meaning of bread as both physical and spiritual food. The language of feeding of the 5,000 is clearly Eucharistic: Jesus took the bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it—what Gregory Dix called the “four movements of the Eucharist.” The rest of the chapter is an extended reflection in a series of dialogues on the meaning of the bread, centering on the great claim we heard twice in today’s Gospel lesson: “I AM the Bread of Life.”

Unlike Matthew, Mark, and Luke, John’s Gospel has no parables. Instead, we find extended discourses and narratives which expand upon encounters with individuals or groups. In many of these, Jesus uses spiritual and symbolic language, and the hearer interprets it literally, not symbolically. In Chapter 3 Nicodemus responds to Jesus’ call to be born again with the question as whether a person can return to their mother’s womb. In Chapter 4 the Samaritan woman at the well responds to Jesus’ offer of living water with a declaration of simple thirst. And in John 6, Jesus’ assertion about bread and his identity is met with similar misunderstanding.

John’s Gospel probably took shape over at least 50 years. It contains some very early material alongside the results of extended reflection on the life of the Church, and how it seeks to live into being the Body of Christ. What we hear in John 6 is one of the prime examples. From early times, the Church’s life together centred on the Lord’s Supper, a symbolic and memorial act which must be taught to every succeeding generation of Christians.

The central assertion has always been that we do this in memory of Jesus, and that Jesus is truly present as we share in the sacrament. How that happens, how we do it, what rules we put on it, have been issues at least since the time of Paul, forty or so years before John’s Gospel was given its final form.

We come to the table as ordinary people. We share in something very simple. But if we come in faith, guided by the Spirit, what we are as we depart is something more than ordinary people who have shared a simple meal. I have long held that the most important point of the Eucharist is the dismissal, when the People of God, having gathered in faith, heard the Word proclaimed, and shared in the Bread of Life, are sent forth to be the Bread of Life for the world.

Gandhi said:
To a hungry [person], a piece of bread is the face of God.

May we go forth from this place today to show the face of God to all whom we meet, sharing the Bread of Life both physically and spiritually in the same love which Jesus showed to us on the cross.

Symbols? May we all be symbols of God’s love in the world. And more than that, may our presence with others be a sacrament, making God’s love more real in all that we do, all that we say, all that we are.

May it be so.

God is Calling

Notes for a sermon preached at Holy Trinity, Old Strathcona, Edmonton, June 16, 2024
Text: I Samuel 15:34 – 16:13.1

Adults often ask children what they want to be when they grow up, and often the responses are unrealistic. Someone once said that adults ask kids this question so that they can get some new ideas! When we put on one of our favourite CD’s,2 my wife often says “When I grow up, I want to be Tommy Banks.” My own history is one of changing direction several times, most recently from full-time to retired ministry, which took a while to figure out what it meant – it wasn’t totally by choice! The “churchy” word about discerning your path in life is “vocation”, about which our lesson from I Samuel has something to teach us.

This is where we first meet David, as he is summoned from herding the sheep to have Samuel anoint him as God’s chosen King. Samuel’s coming meant that something important was afoot, and surely David wanted to be part of it. As the youngest son, the task of tending the sheep fell to him, while his brothers could stay home to greet the great man. I can almost hear him saying “It’s not fair!” just like any other teenager.

Was he wondering about Samuel’s purpose in visiting his father? He might have had an idea about what was up: King Saul had fallen from God’s favour, and Samuel’s visit likely had something to do with that. Did he have any idea of what God intended that day? Had he heard some kind of call? We’re not told. What we are told is that none of his older brothers passed muster as they paraded by, while Samuel listened for God’s voice. None of them were called to be King.

The rest of the family was surprised when Samuel told them to bring David to him. The youngest? A mere boy? Directed by God, Samuel saw otherwise, and called David out of his family to become King. Samuel named David’s vocation. Had David already heard it? We don’t know, but later events show him growing into the realization and fulfillment of his divinely-ordained role in life.

I have twice been an assessor for ACPO3, a major part of the process our church uses for discernment of vocations to the priesthood. Candidates are interviewed in a variety of settings, looking at the “3 C’s”: Character, Charism, and Call. Dealing with the first two is a bit like a conventional job interview, but the third presents some special issues. “Call” means both the candidate’s personal sense, and the affirmation of their community. I met some who said strongly that they knew that God needed them for the priesthood, but whose recommendations from others were more equivocal. Contrariwise, I met one young man, immensely gifted, by all accounts a really fine person – charism and character in spades! – but who simply could not articulate any kind of personal call. When we asked, “Why do you want to be a priest?” his only response was “Everyone says I should be.” When we asked him what he would do otherwise, he was able to map out a clear direction in academic work – he almost had his Ph.D. dissertation written in his head. We recommended that he continue with that work, and if at some time he was able to say, “I believe God is calling me to be a priest,” he should once more present himself as a candidate.

Vocations to Christian ministry come from both within the person (the “inner call”), and from the community (the “outer call”). Both must be present. Samuel gave David his outer call in dramatic fashion. We will hear more over the summer how David’s inner call developed, but we may be sure that he heard it.

Church folks most often use the word “vocation” in the context of ordained ministry. But please remember this: Christian ministry is not confined to the three-fold ministry of Deacons, Priests, and Bishops – not by a very long shot! The Catechism of the Episcopal Church of the USA teaches that there are four orders of ministry, naming the ministry of all the baptized (laypeople) as primary. I wish our Church had adopted this Catechism.

The ministry of the laity does include the various roles people assume in the church: lay readers and assistants, sides people, sanctuary guild, lectors, intercessors, musicians, teachers, wardens and vestry members, to name some of the most obvious. More importantly, it means the ministries that lay people exercise in the wider world, in all the many and varied ways they follow their calling as disciples of Christ. Every baptized person is called to a new life, dedicated to living into the promises found in the Baptismal Covenant. There is a good reason why this covenant is renewed by the whole congregation at every celebration of Baptism: the newly baptized are welcomed into a community of people who are striving to be God’s ministers in the world – people with many and varied vocations.

What’s your vocation? Some of us – a very few – can say “I’m called to be a priest or deacon in the Church.” But others might say something like “I’m called to be a (_______), the best one that I can be, so that people around me can see Christ at work through my life.”

When an ordination candidate is presented to the Bishop, the Bishop describes the nature of the ministry in question, and then asks, “Do you believe you are called to this ministry?” The Baptismal Covenant is the counterpart of ordination for the ministry of the laity. Any Baptized person can ask the call question for themselves, and then seek the affirmation of the wider Church when they believe they have heard a special call. Just like David, just like that gifted young man, we all need to hear both inner and outer call. We need to listen for the voice of God. And then we need to test our insight with others who are similarly striving to follow Jesus.

And let us never assume that a calling once heard is once and for all time. I once thought I wanted to be a railroad engineer – that didn’t last long! Things change over time, and God may lead us in ways that we hadn’t previously imagined or couldn’t imagine. No-one in my school years could have articulated a desire to design video games! And the kind of job I had with the Provincial government in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s has been almost totally changed by the internet.

We need to keep on listening for God’s call, because it can and does change. But make no mistake about it: God is calling you, and you, and you, and me. God is calling every one of us. We may not always hear clearly, but we may be assured that God will in God’s time send us our own Samuel or Samuels to help us hear better.

God is calling. Listen, pray, test, and respond.

God is calling. Live into that call, and rejoice!

God is calling. In Jesus’s name, may we hear and follow.

Amen.

  1. Video of the sermon and the full service may be found at https://www.facebook.com/holytrinityanglican ↩︎
  2. “Yes Indeed“, Tommy Banks, solo piano, Royalty Records RRI-300-9647, 1997 ↩︎
  3. Advisory Committee on Postulants for Ordination ↩︎

Abide in me

Notes for a sermon preached at Holy Trinity Anglican Church, Edmonton, April 28, 2024
Texts: John 15:1-11; 1 John 4:7-12 

I spent the summer of 1986 enrolled in Clinical Pastoral Education (C.P.E.) at the Royal Alexandra Hospital. C.P.E. is an intensive program of on-site practice, study, and group work, all under a trained supervisor. I learned a lot in those weeks, including that I was not well-suited to the job of hospital chaplain!

I spent much of my time in those 11 weeks on a long-term medical ward, where it was possible to develop relationships with some of the patients. On the other wards I was assigned, patients were typically only there for a few days. One patient was a man in late-stage cancer. He knew he was dying. During our visits, I came to see that he had accepted what his future held, and I was privileged to be an audience for some of his thoughts about his past life, both positive and negative. I experienced his hospital room as a place of great peace. He had one major regret: while he had come to terms with his prognosis, his wife had not. She was praying continually for his recovery, believing that Jesus would heal his affliction. I only met her once: she arrived during a visit, and told me to leave because I was not of the same faith. A few days later I learned from the staff that he had died. Not long after, I passed a nearby church, where I saw his wife prostrate over the steps, clearly in deep grief.

Why am I telling this story today?

The Gospels for the 5th, 6th and 7th Sundays of Easter are drawn from the Farewell Discourse of John’s Gospel, which runs from the end of the Last Supper in Chapter 13 through Chapters 14 – 17. It begins with Jesus giving the “New Commandment” – ‘Love one another’ – by which everyone will know that they are his disciples.

The commandment sets the tone for the rest of the discourse. The central issue is how the disciples are to live without Jesus physically present. Love is to be the rule of their lives, but they will not be on their own. Three times Jesus promises that he will send the Holy Spirit to be with them, to teach them and to be their guide. And three times he promises that he will give them whatever they ask for, if they “abide in [him],” or ask “in my name.” The repetition of these promises indicates just how important they are. The promise of the Spirit is a topic for another day: today we look at the second promise.

The promises in Chapters 14 & 16 refer to asking “in my name.” Quoting those verses out of context can make it sound like a kind of magic spell. Just say “Jesus” and you’ll get what you want! I have heard this kind of thinking from some very well-meaning people, who have said things like, “We didn’t get what we wanted. I guess we didn’t pray hard enough.” As we heard it, the promise in Chapter 15 uses the word “abide,” a word we don’t often hear in this sense in daily speech, but which is found repeatedly in the both the Gospel lection and the reading from 1 John. Other translations have words like “remain”, “live your life”, “joined,” “reside.” Put these alongside “in my name,” and we get some clues about what Jesus means by these promises.

The guiding principle is love. Remember that the first and great commandment is to love God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind, and all your strength. Truly loving God will shape all that we do, all that we say, all that we are, and is reflected in the second: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” The New Commandment Jesus gave is both a repetition and a strengthening of these. Love is our rule because God is love.

Our prayers must always be in the context of love for God and God’s created order (which includes all human beings), under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Prayer is not meant to bend God to our will, but to shape our will to reflect God’s.

One of my favorite sayings about prayer is:

Don’t pray to get what you want;  
pray to want what you get.

Another saying is paraphrased from a sermon by St. Augustine on today’s Epistle lesson :

Love God and do whatever you please: for the soul trained in love to God will do nothing to offend the One who is Beloved.

The first part of the quote is sometimes used a bit flippantly to justify the speaker in doing whatever they want, but the clause after the colon makes it clear that seeking to live life in Christ will serve to shape our wills to God’s. That doesn’t mean that every prayer of a faithful person will be answered just as we wish, for our finite human wills are subject to the temptations and trials of this life.

The couple in my story seem to me to point to these two different approaches to prayer. The husband’s prayers were more for those around him, including his wife, asking that they would find the same kind of peace he had found as he neared death. I do not wish to disparage his wife’s faith, but I believe her well-intentioned prayers were rooted more in her own desires and grief than in seeking to know and accept God’s will. I wish I knew how she fared in the time afterwards. I can only pray that she eventually worked through the agony of her grief to find some peace, some kind of acceptance of what had happened for her and her spouse.

Some of you may recall an acronym about prayer, which I first heard in confirmation class: ACTS.

A is for Adoration, spending time in God’s presence, usually without words.
C is for Confession or Contrition, facing our own shortcomings before God.
T is for thanksgiving, praising God for all that we have and all that we are.
S is for Supplication, holding up the needs of others to God, and (finally) for ourselves.

It’s easy to skip one or all of the first three before going on the last. The order is important, because the first three help us to pray as Agnes Sanford said:

The first thing to pray for is the wisdom to know what to pray for.

The first three also help us to put ourselves in a place where we can begin to perceive God’s will, to experience God’s love, and to be able to shape our supplications according to what gives glory to God.

When we pray – however we pray – let us remember that we are not there to dictate to God what God should do. God knows that well enough. Rather, we are called to approach God seeking first to know what God wills, confident in God’s love. And let us remember that hearing comes before speaking.

Let us pray then that through the power of the Holy Spirit, God will open our hearts and minds, that our lives may be shaped more into the likeness of the one who loved us into existence, who loves us today, and who will love us for all eternity.

May it be so.

A Call from the Edge

Notes for a sermon preached at Holy Trinity (Strathcona/Edmonton), Dec. 10, 2023
Texts: Mark 1:1-8; Isaiah 40:1-11    

I once saw a priest start a kid’s talk with the question, “What’s a prophet?” It’s great when the answers you get lead into what you want to talk about, but this time the response from one young person was “It’s when you make money.” The talk went sideways from there, because the kids really didn’t seem to know the biblical word, and just wanted to talk about money. They understood that! “Prophet” is a word that doesn’t turn up very often in daily speech, and when it does, its usual sense is a person who foretells the future.

Predicting the future can be part of the prophetic role, but it’s not the whole story – not by a long shot! This past fall I thought a lot about prophets, when our Wednesday morning Bible study group read the Book of Ezekiel. If you haven’t read Ezekiel, let me tell you that the group found it very challenging, often harsh and violent, with relatively few signs of hope, notably in the first half. People left some sessions saying things like “I sure hope things get better!” Not a fun read, but if a doom and gloom kind of guy like Ezekiel is considered a major prophet, we might well be excused for wondering why these people play such a large role in Scripture, especially in the Hebrew Bible.

Fr. Richard Rohr says that all the prophets speak from “the edge of the inside,”[i] and Ezekiel is a case in point. The book is set in the early years of the exile to Babylon. A member of the priestly class (an insider), Ezekiel is among the deportees, far removed from the centre of his people’s life – Jerusalem and the Temple. The big question is why this disaster has happened. The prophet condemns the people of Jerusalem, whose faithless ways have led to the departure of God’s glory from the holy city. From the edge of his people’s existence, the previous insider can speak God’s message clearly.

The latter part of the book is devoted to a vision of a restored Temple and land, which bears little resemblance to what actually happened some years later, when a new Temple was eventually built. Before that could happen, the people had to return, an event on the near horizon for the prophet whose words we heard in today’s first reading, so-called “Second Isaiah,” who proclaimed:

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her
that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.

The exile in Babylon was drawing to its end. The deportees would be led home to the land of Israel, forging their way through the wilderness, protected by God’s hand as they journeyed through a place of great discomfort. God would give them comfort, which is not the same as making them comfortable. This would be no easy chair kind of existence, but a journey through a wilderness transformed and turned upside-down by the hand of God. Like Ezekiel, Isaiah also spoke “from the edge of the inside,” but now of a return to the centre.

Receiving comfort from God means to be strengthened by God for the days ahead. It means being empowered by God to work through and in places of discomfort. The message of all the prophets, including Ezekiel, Isaiah, and John, is not to “get comfortable”, but to seek God’s way, knowing that God’s way may well – may often! – involve discomfort.

Writing in the December 2023 issue of The Christian Century, Pastor Melissa Bills said this:

Discomfort is holy when it leads us to deeper love for God and neighbor. It is sacred when it spurs our hearts to love and good deeds. It is a blessing when it drives us to seek justice and liberation. It does not cut us off from God’s promises of comfort but rather makes space for us to receive them.[ii]

Chapter 40 of Isaiah ends this way:

[God] gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted;
but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
   they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

This is the prophet whom John invoked in his call to prepare the way of the Lord. John stood in the heritage of Isaiah and all the Hebrew prophets, speaking and acting as God had directed. That’s what makes a prophet a prophet: they don’t speak for themselves, but for God!

John’s message was clear: the Kingdom of God was drawing near, soon to be fulfilled in the one to whom John pointed – Jesus!

John’s life was not comfortable – living in the wilderness, clothed roughly, eating what he could find on the land. But he surely took comfort from knowing that he was doing God’s work, speaking for God, proclaiming the one coming after him, pointing away from himself and his own desires to God’s wishes, pointing to what God would do among those who heeded the call.

I have sometimes heard people say things like “If you say, ‘yes’ to Jesus, your life will be great from then on.” If only that were true! Following Jesus has a cost. It demands much of us. But the good news is that God offers the same comfort – the same strength – that was offered to the Hebrew people in exile. John called the people to repent, and to accept baptism as a token of that repentance – and repentance is hard work. It takes strength and determination, and the courage to refuse the easy way – the comfortable way.

On this Sunday of John the baptizer, let us remember that the need for prophets like John did not end with the coming of Jesus. If anything, the world stands in greater need than ever of hearing the prophet’s call to repentance. We followers of Jesus have inherited the role of John: to point to Jesus, to call people out of their comfortable places, and to proclaim God’s desires for the world.

The great Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann has said this:

The prophetic tasks of the church are
to tell the truth in a society that lives in an illusion,
grieve in a society that practices denial,
and express hope in a society that lives in despair.

Only by telling the truth, by grieving honestly, and living in hope can we ever begin to find the comfort promised by the prophet so many years ago. Like the prophets before us, we are not called to leave this world behind, but to challenge the world from “the edge of the inside,” as we see in the ministry of the prophets. We must be prepared to leave the comfortable places in the centre, seeking God’s strength as we live into our God-given mission – our prophetic tasks.

So… let’s go back to that first question: What is a prophet?
Better to ask “Who is a prophet?”
Look around you – anyone you see may be called to step out of their comfort zone, to rely on God’s comfort – and to speak God’s word in in a world that desperately needs to hear that Word!

In the name of the one who came to give us holy comfort,

Amen.

[i] https://cac.org/daily-meditations/the-true-center-2023-09-10/

[ii] https://www.christiancentury.org/article/lectionary/december-10-advent-2b-isaiah-40-1-11-mark-1-1-8

                                               

Give God What is God’s

Notes for a sermon preached at St. Augustine’s-Parkland Anglican Church, Spruce Grove AB, Oct. 22, 2023. Texts: Matt 22:15-22; (Exodus 33:12-23)

Some years ago, I called my father for a chat, and he said he was glad for the break because he was “rendering unto Caesar.” Of course, what he meant, in the language of the King James Bible, was that he was working on his taxes. Anyone would like a break from that! And this was in the days before user-friendly tax software and e-filing, which meant wading through piles of forms and declarations and receipts, and in the end, often having to write a big cheque.

None of us really like paying taxes, but most of us would recognize their necessity. In words ascribed to the first president of the USA, “No taxes can be devised which are no more or less inconvenient or unpleasant,” but a later president (FDR) said this: “Taxes are the dues we pay for the privilege of membership in an organized society.” For the most part, we don’t question the legality of our taxes, and when we do, we have a legal system to adjudicate it.

Things were different in Jesus’ time. There were at least three reasons for tax collectors to be routinely lumped in with other sinners.
1. They worked on contract to the occupying power (Traitors!).
2. They took what they wanted for themselves, often at extortionate rates above what they were required to raise (Robbers!).
3. They dealt in coinage which many regarded as blasphemous – the tribute denarius – and collected taxes which many Jewish religious authorities regarded as forbidden by the Torah (Blasphemers!).

Today’s Gospel focuses on that third issue.

“Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

There’s no question of levels of government or constitutional issues. The Roman Empire financed its rule over its territories through taxation. There were some benefits, to be sure, but for faithful Jews, the Romans were faithless and often ruthless occupiers, and paying taxes to them was an affront to their religious and social structure. It’s a legitimate question, but as it is stated, it demands a simple “Yes or No” response. It’s a trap! If Jesus says “Yes,” then his questioners can accuse him of unfaithfulness to Jewish law. If he says “No,” they can accuse him of defying Roman authority. They’re thinking “Gotcha!”

Jesus sees right through them: he is “aware of their malice.” As he so often does, he responds with another question. Asking for the coin shows their hypocrisy – someone in the crowd has the coin! His question is about the offensive coin:

Whose head is this, and whose title?”

Obvious answer: the emperor’s. Then Jesus says this:

Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s,
 and to God the things that are God’s.

The emperor’s image and title are to be given back to him – they belong to him! – but what are we to give to God?

I want to suggest that the crucial thing is the concept of “image.” Remember that “graven images” such as found on this coin are forbidden by the second commandment. Give the image of Caesar back to Caesar, by all means – it offends God! On the other hand, let us recall this:

So God created humankind in his image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.                                         (Genesis 1:27)

If the image of the emperor is to be found on a silver coin, the image of God is to be found in us – all of humanity, in all our wonderful diversity.

I have heard this text used in a stewardship context, often with the speaker identifying what should be given to God with a 10% tithe, or something like that. That seems to me to do the text a disservice, relativizing what Jesus said, implying that only part of what we are and what we have belongs to God. To get the full impact of Jesus’ words requires us to perceive that nothing we have is of our own making but is a gift from God. As Paul wrote:

What do you have that you did not receive?                                (II Cor 4:7)

Our call is to give to God the image of God, “ourselves, our souls and bodies,” as the post-communion prayer in the Book of Common Prayer puts it. As we hear it in Genesis, “image” does not refer to something visual, like a photograph or statue, but to something much deeper, much broader, much more active.

Being made in God’s image does not mean that we physically look like God. That places God in the realm of the visible and knowable. Even Moses, of whom it was said that he alone met God face to face, did not actually do so, but was only allowed a glimpse of God from behind as God passed by. Artists have struggled with this for centuries. I’m reminded of the story of a little girl who was drawing a picture, when an adult onlooker asked what she was drawing. “I’m making a picture of God,” she said. “But no-one knows what God looks like.” To which the child replied, “They will when I’m done!” Chutzpah!

Pictures and statues are fixed in time and space. We can look at them with awe, but they rarely point toward any kind of action. We must go beyond the visual into the realm of God’s activity: Creating, Redeeming, and Sanctifying. To be made in God’s image means to be called to join with God in God’s activity: caring for and protecting the created order, being one with Christ in living into the redemption of the world, living in the Spirit to help this world become more holy.

The image of God is best found in God’s people seeking to be more like God in all that they do, all that they say, all that they are. It is in our words and deeds that we help make God present to other around us—and everything counts, every word and every deed. Everything matters! To give God what is God’s is to recognize that God has made us in the divine image, to be God’s hands and feet and voices in this world, imaging God in how we live. To give God what is God’s is to dedicate our whole beings to living as beloved children of God—giving all to God. This does not mean that we should all become monks or something like that. It does mean that, as Paul wrote:

“…whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.”  (1 Cor. 10:31b)

The good news is that when we give our lives to God, God gives to us all that we require to live out our call to be God’s holy people.

Live for the glory of God!

May it be so.