We had a great taco dinner (on Friday, December 27th) - thank you, Randy & Erin for gifting us dinner. Then we enjoyed some time together with a Secret Santa game and Christmas crackers.
It’s an “Almost New Year’s Eve” Party
For the past few years the children have celebrated New Year's Eve on the Sunday in between Christmas & New Year's. This year we decided to invite the rest of the congregation to party with us. So Scott planned a very interactive worship service, one where everyone could participate and get creative. We sang hymns together, prayed together and even enjoyed breakfast together - right in the middle of worship! Thank you, to everyone who joined us, for being such great sports and showing our children and families that they are important, too.
Christmas Eve services
Please join us for either or both of our Christmas Eve services on December 24th.
The first service, at 6:00 pm, is geared for children and families. Movement and noise are expected in this service! We will be building a "No rehearsal nativity scene" together.
The second service, at 8:00 pm, is a beautiful service filled with Christmas music and The Sacrament of Holy Communion.
Everyone is invited to worship with us.
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Family Advent!
Worship was family & children friendly this morning, with lots of food, fun & a special visitor following the service.
Decorating Gingerbread cookies. 
Decorating Gingerbread cookies. 
Someone's waiting for Santa! 
Sunday, December 22, 2019
Go to this link to find out what you need to know for this Sunday!
It’s almost New Year’s Eve!
Come in your pajamas, come for breakfast! We will have our annual "It's almost New Year's Eve" party. Starts at 10:00 am.
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Patience, A Poem for the Third Sunday in Advent, Year A
Here, first of all, is a video version of the poem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L50EIIFBJAs
Hespeler,
15 December 2019 © Scott McAndless
Isaiah 35, Luke 1:46b-55, James 5:7-10,
Matthew 11:2-11
A Poem for the Third Sunday in Advent, Year A
When Santa came this Christmas, I was the first in line.
I’d camped out in the tree lot amid the spruce and pine.
And when the key turned in the door at one minute to nine,
I pushed my way into the mall and cared not for the whines
Of little kids who thought that they should be the first to see
The jolly elf upon his throne. That first place was for me.
He looked at me and raised his eyebrows at me quizzically.
But then he shrugged and pat his hand upon his ample knee.
“Sit down,” he said, “and you can tell me what it was that brought
You here in such a frenzy because I have seen a lot
And never have I seen someone so desperate that he fought
His way through regiments of elves to sit upon this spot.”
“Dear Santa, thanks for seeing me, you are my final hope.”
I said and put my hands together in a leaning slope.
“There is one thing that you could give me so that I could cope
You might think that the world’s okay, but I can tell you, ‘nope!’
“I keep wanting things to change, for justice to be done,
That the greedy be chastised, the wicked on the run.
I want the lowly lifted up and that the poor have fun.
But nothing ever happens, sir. There is no progress, none!”
“So grant me one thing, Santa dear. It doesn’t matter how,
Just give me patience. For to you I make this solemn vow
If, in your wisdom, this small gift you do not me allow
I will go crazy if I fail to obtain patience now!”
Well, Santa took a look at me and said, “I understand.
For many others just like you are found within this land.
So let me hereby promise as I take you by the hand,
You’ll find contained in what I give you now what you demand.
With that he handed me a box that was all wrapped in grey
And tied with ribbons that were glossy, festive, bright and gay.
But on the box there was a tag that took my breath away.
It bore a warning: “Do not open until Christmas Day!”
So now I sit in misery, my heart filled with despair.
I have received the thing I want but still it seems unfair.
It lies beneath the Christmas tree, the answer to my prayer.
Impatience will be death for me until Christmas is there.
The Baptist lay in misery within a cell of stone
And dealt with torture everyday that made him cry and moan.
But more than pain of body was the pain that filled his heart
To think that he had failed his quest: King Herod to outsmart.
Now, he had hoped that someone else would take up his campaign
and challenge that fox, Herod, and his most unholy reign.
He’d even thought that it might be the man from Galilee
Who’d take his mantle and his task and set the people free.
But ever since poor John’s arrest he had been uninspired
To see what Jesus’ efforts were. There was a lack of fire.
So now impatience wracked his soul. And he began to fear
That he would never live to see God’s kingdom drawing near.
John still had a few allies left on whom he could depend.
And so he called one to him and told him that he would send
Him to this Galilean man to get the inside scoop
Was Jesus gonna do it now, or should they just regroup?
I’ve got to say, I’ve often been where John was on that day.
It’s easy to despair when things don’t go in the good way.
It’s been a good 2000 years since Jesus came on scene
At times it seems the kingdom’s further than it’s ever been.
So pay attention to the answer Jesus sent to John.
He didn’t claim the powers of darkness all would soon be gone.
Instead he pointed to the kindness, healing, joy that sprang
To life in places that were visited by Jesus’ gang.
For every act of kindliness, each act that raises those
Who live in daily suffering, it is an act that shows
That God has not forgotten them. God’s promises are sure.
But patience still is needed because old ways still endure.
It’s like a box at Christmastime that’s all wrapped up in grey
And tied with ribbons that are glossy, festive, bright and gay.
But on the box there is a tag that takes your breath away.
It bears a warning: “Do not open until Christmas Day!”
That box is there to teach and grant you what you really need.
For patience is not something that you get because you plead.
It’s something that can grow within when practiced as an art
It comes to those who carry hope within their human heart.
Sunday, December 15, 2019
For everything you need to know for Sunday, please follow this link:
I Suppose you’re wondering why you’re here today
Note: This sermon has also been posted as an audio podcast. Click on this link to listen and subscribe to the podcast: Retelling the Bible.
Hespeler, 8 December 2019 © Scott McAndless – 2nd Advent
Isaiah 11:1-10, Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19, Romans 15:4-13, Matthew 3:1-12
I suppose you’re all wondering why you’re here today. In particular, why you are in this rather desolate and lonely place on the shores of the Jordan River. I know you have come here from busy lives. Some of you came here from Jerusalem, the city that never sleeps. And many of you came from other towns and villages in Judea and even a few of you provincials came from Galilee. You all have things to do back there. It’s the busy season. But you have left all of that behind and come to this desolate place. What’s more, you have left behind that land, the PromiIsed Land that God gave to you as a people and the particular plots of land that have been passed down in your families for generations.
How could you do that, abandon the land of your own ancestors? Well, isn’t it obvious? The Promised Land is no longer your land. It’s no longer the land that God gave you because it is ruled by foreigners who serve only the gods of Rome and the emperor. It is no longer Israel but Roman Judea. Therefore, you stand here on the ancient and sacred border of the Promised Land as outsiders. You are just like the children of Israel back in the days of Yeshua who came to this very spot and stood on the banks of the river and looked into the land that God had promised them, and it was not their land.
And what happened to them? You all know the story. As Yeshua stood there before the people, God went before them and the priests stepped into the water of the Jordan River carrying the sacred Ark of the Covenant and the water stopped flowing. Right there, just upstream from this this very spot, the water stood up in a heap and the bed of the river ran dry so that the people might enter into the land that God had given to them.
Maybe you didn’t realize this when you left home, but you have come here today because it is time for that to happen again. Once again, God will make a path through this river for you. Once again God will give you back the land that is promised.
Now, it will be a little bit different this time. We do not have the priests with us here, for the priests have given in to the powerful of this world and they work with the forces of darkness. The priests and the temple are lost to us today. They do nothing but pacify the people so that the Romans may rule undisturbed. So the priests are not here to carry the Ark of the Covenant into the waters and so the river will not run dry. But this will not prevent us. This time you shall pass through the waters of the Jordan and you will enter into the land as new people.
In a few minutes, John, God’s messenger, the baptizer and the voice that cries out in this wilderness place will get around to this group. He will take you into the Promised Land. But, since you must pass through the water to do so, this is what you must do. To prepare yourself for the chilly waters of the Jordan River, you must repent. That is the only way for you to enter into the land as the force that will take it back. You cannot enter as the person you have been, you must enter as the person you will become.
Now, I hear some of you asking each other, what does that mean? How do I repent? I have spoken to a lot of groups like yours, and I know how you talk. I know that sometimes you seem to think that repentance is all about how you feel. Now, granted, I understand that some of you may feel bad about how you behaved in the past. You may have disappointed yourself or others. You may not have lived up to God’s expectations of you. If you feel guilty about anything like that, or if anyone has made you to feel guilty for it, that is fine. God forgives and sets you free from your guilt.
But I’ll tell you something, John is not particularly interested in your feelings of guilt. He’s not interested in the past. He doesn’t talk about wrath in the past tense, only in the future tense. We’ve all messed up in the past. John is interested in the now and in the future and that is what repentance is about.
Repentance is about changing your mind, changing your heart and, thus, bringing about a change in your actions. Repentance is about you, yourself, being and becoming the change that is actually needed in our land. But (and here I’m going to give you guys a bit of a warning) if any of you just happen to belong to the party of the Pharisees or the party of the Sadducees, well, John really doesn’t like you guys. I mean, really. “Brood of vipers,” that’s what he called the last batch of Sadducees that came through here. And, I want to let you know, that it’s not really personal. It’s not that he doesn’t like you. It’s not even that he really has any problem with the teachings or the practices of those two groups. In theory at least, he knows that the Pharisees are committed to follow all of the various commandments of the law. He knows that the Sadducees have committed themselves to serving God in the temple.
His problem is not with any of that. His problem is that you have been so willing to put all of that aside and work with those who would exploit this land and its people for their own gain so that they might be secure and comfortable. So I am warning you Pharisees and Sadducees, when he sees you, he will not just ask you to repent. He will ask you to show fruit worthy of repentance. He will demand that you show him in your actions that you have changed your minds about what really matters.
That is why you have come here. That is why you have left behind everything that is familiar and comfortable to come to this desolate place, because the time has come for us to take this country back. And I’m warning you, John will talk about this in some pretty wild terms. He will not just say that the tree of this nation is rotten and doesn’t produce any fruit. He will say that, right now, the axe is about to strike the root of the tree and it will be cut down and thrown into fire. Oh, John loves talking about fire! Don’t get him started.
But, I’ll tell you, I’ve been listening to his spiel for a while now, and I have noticed something. John willingly admits that he’s not the one who’s going to carry all of this out. He’s just here to prepare everyone, to prepare all of you to be part of it. But someone else is going to make it happen.
So, I thought a lot about that and I think I’ve figured it out. We needed a Yeshua to take this nation the first time. To use the old Hebrew language, we needed a Joshua. That’s why I believe that John is here to prepare the way for a new Yeshua – a new Joshua, or maybe for you Greek speakers in the crowd, a new Jesus. It’s all the same name. But actually what his name is and where he comes from doesn’t matter, this is about what he’s going to do. And what he’s going to do is take the nation back for God.
Now, it’s pretty clear what John thinks that’s going to look like. It’s going to be like the first time, with fire and destruction and death. I get where he’s coming from, but I’m beginning to think that he’s not quite right about that. This new Yeshua is going to be different, I think. I actually don’t think that it really worked the first time, taking this nation by violence. The new Yeshua, I think, will not take the country by violence, but rather by love, peace and hope. But whatever it is, just understand that John is just preparing the way for what God is about to do and you are here in order to prepare to be part of it. So, into the water you go!
I suppose you’re all wondering why you’re here today. In particular, why you are in this rather desolate and lonely place that it sometimes seems the world has forgotten. I know you have come here from busy lives. Many of you have demanding jobs and schedules. I know some of you are retired, but sometimes I look at your lives and think you might be even busier than those who work. Nevertheless, you have set all of that aside to come apart to this place at this time. Why are you here?
You are here, quite simply, because it’s time to take this nation back. And you may think that I’m talking about taking the nation back from the forces of secularization, but actually I’m not. Yes, it is true that this nation is less explicitly Christian today than it has been in the past and of course that does present certain challenges to Christians living in it.
But that is actually the kind of thing that the Pharisees and Sadducees were working on. Remember them, that brood of vipers? Their problem was that they were so obsessed with the place of their religion in the culture that they missed a much more insidious danger. They allied themselves with powerful political force, not challenging the evil that it did, in order to advance their tamed version of the faith, a version that would not disturb the powers-that-be and that allowed the mad emperor to do whatever he pleased without check or balance.
No, this conquest is different. It is about confronting the truly evil forces at work in our world – the forces of greed, of power for the sake of power, of hatred and tribalism. And, for that reason, the Yeshua that we follow will not lead us in a conquest of violence and hate but of love and hope.
You are here because you have been called here to be a part of the nation that should be. You stand on the borders of that new nation, on the banks of the river, to prepare to enter. And just like those pilgrims who came to the river in the days of the Baptist, you shall enter by passing through the water. Indeed, most of you have already passed through.
So there is one thing that remains for you. You must repent. And though I know that all of us carry around regrets for our failures and shortcomings in the past, repentance does not mean merely how you feel bad about those things. And, though I promise you that God does forgive and doesn’t seek to hold against you what has gone wrong in the past, repentance is not merely about seeking forgiveness for the past. All of that is merely the prelude to repentance.
True repentance is about how you choose to be today and tomorrow and in the weeks and months to come. It’s about how you change your mind and your heart and ultimately your actions so that you begin to live according to the change you want to see in the world. That is what it meant when you were taken and dragged through the waters of the river from one side to the other. That’s what it meant when you were baptized and that is what it will mean when you are baptized.
That is it. That is what you have come here for. I know that there are some who would add other things on top of that. They would tell you that there are certain things you have to believe, certain ideas that you have to sign on to. I have no problem with any of that. But the fact of the matter is that we are never all going to agree about all of those things. Where we must agree is here on the banks of this river. We are here because the new Yeshua has come and we are part of the army that will take back this land to a place of peace, hope and joy that will be for all.
