Mid-Week Message - November 13

May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be always with you!

Tuesday was Remembrance Day, and I suspect that most of us attended services either in-person or on TV/Radio as we honoured the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month that marks the anniversary of the end of the First World War. We name it as the First World War, but at the time and in the years following, it was called The Great War, or sometimes The War to End All Wars. With the Second World War and the various wars that have followed, from our perspective in history we know now that this was optimistic thinking.

Some of you know that I presented a paper last year at the L. M. Montgomery conference at UPEI, and the paper that I presented looked at the theology of hope in the years during and following the First World War (through the lens of a couple of Montgomery's novels written in that time period).

In the years leading up to the Great War (and I use "years" loosely here - I'm talking about a period of time of a century of two, beginning with the Enlightenment), the prevailing theology of hope was that the world was continually getting better and better. With all of the emerging scientific discoveries, greater access to education, and even the industrial revolution, it was believed that the world would continue to get better and better until the Kingdom of God had fully arrived.  The role of the church was to participate in the unfolding of this Kingdom of God through things like running schools and hospitals.

The Great War brought an end to this way of thinking, because if the world was continually getting better and better as the Kingdom of God was unfolding, then the horrors of trench warfare and mustard gas attacks and mechanized armies shouldn't be possible.

And so in the years (and decades) following the War, theologians had to re-consider what we mean by hope.  Christian hope is not wishful thinking - it is seeing that the world as it is right now doesn't line up with God's vision of the way the world should be, and then trusting that God's vision will become reality some day.

In the church (at least in the North American Protestant church) in the years following the war, two different strands of thinking about hope emerged.  One was a "chastened optimism" that said that the world was continuing to improve, and that eventually God's kingdom would emerge, that God's vision would become a reality - in this way of thinking, the Great War was just a setback along the way.  The other way of thinking about hope was to acknowledge that humans are always going to mess up in one way or another, but that God was more powerful than all of our failures, and that some day, solely through the power of God, the world will be transformed into perfection.

Both of these ways of thinking about hope exist today - I can't tell you what is the right answer and what is the wrong answer.  But what I do know is that it is still important to have hope.  Like the church of every time and every place, we can look around the world today and see that the world as it is doesn't match up with God's dream for the world.  Wars are still being fought.  People are still going hungry.  The world still values some lives more than other lives.  But when we have hope, we trust that the world won't always be this way.

As I say each year on our Dec. 6 service marking the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women - we will continue to gather every year on December 6 until the time comes when we won't need to gather any more because gender-based violence will be a thing of the past.  Just one specific example of hope - trusting that the world as it is right now isn't the way that the world will always be.

In these weeks between Remembrance Day and Advent (hope is one of the major themes of Advent!), I invite you to spend some time pondering hope.  Hope is hard, and it doesn't make any logical sense at all - instead, it is a gift from God. What can you do to nurture this gift of hope, even when there is no sign in the present moment that things will ever change?

Moving on to announcements this week:

• Worship on Sunday will be at 9:15 at Summerville and 11:15 at Westfield and on Facebook Live. This week will tie into the hope that I wrote about up above. Our story is a challenging one - Jesus is teaching in the temple shortly before his arrest, and his message isn't a warm fuzzy one this week. Yet, to me, it is all about hope.  If you want to read it ahead of time, it is Luke 21:5-19. And if you want to see a comic strip about this reading that made me laugh out loud when I saw it, you can click here.

• Asking the Big Questions - Tuesday November 18, 4:30-6pm (with pizza at the end!). This month's question will be:  But what about the devil? As always, there will be questions and discussion prompts and activities to help us engage in this question - a bit like Sunday School but for all ages!

• Session and Official Board - Wednesday November 19 at Westfield United Church; Session at 6:30 and Official Board at 7:30. Members of these groups can expect to hear from the chairs shortly with agendas, minutes, and report requests.

• Christmas Letters - Thank you to Elaine for printing this year's letter and making it look pretty!  I signed them all yesterday, and now Elaine is busy stuffing envelopes.  They will be available at Summerville and Westfield this coming Sunday, and at Long Reach the following week. Please help the church save on postage by taking not only your letter, but by taking any that you are able to hand-deliver to friends, family members, and neighbours!

• Bulletin Covers - In the month of December, we always have extra bulletins to print. In addition to the regular Sunday bulletins, we have mid-week services for Dec. 6, for the UCW Christmas Communion Service, and for Blue Christmas, as well as bulletins for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  Elaine would like to have a selection of seasonal pictures to choose from for the covers of these bulletins - think Christmas trees, Christmas lights, the church sanctuary decorated for Christmas, nativity sets, even a snowy winter landscape.  If you have any pictures that might make a good bulletin cover (the picture should have a "portrait" rather than "landscape" orientation), please send them along to the office at wuc@nb.sympatico.ca then watch for it on the front of an upcoming bulletin.

• Advent Candles - Cindy Patstone is once again selling Advent Candles as a fundraiser for the church! These are (smoke-less, drip-less) taper candles with the numbers 1-24 printed down the side. Each day in December, you burn it for a short while, down to the next number, and when you get to the bottom of the candle, Christmas Eve is here!  These candles are $15 each, or 2 for $25. To buy one, you can talk to Cindy; and I also have a box of them in my car in case anyone from Summerville or Long Reach would like to buy one (or anyone I see at various mid-week gatherings).

• Bible Study - there will be no bible study next Wednesday as Joan and I will be going to the Snow Centre to lead worship there. We will resume the following week (Nov. 26)!
  

Thank You Corner - this week's Thank You has to go out to everyone who made Tuesday's turkey dinner happen.  This is another situation where I can't name everyone that I want to thank, not only because the list would be too long, but also because I probably don't know every single person who helped and I would be sure to miss someone.  But thank you to the UCW for organizing, to everyone who cooked squash or turkeys, to everyone who peeled potatoes or carrots, to everyone who helped with the set up or who helped clean up afterwards, to everyone who served the meal, to everyone who bought a ticket, to everyone who told their friends and family members about the meal.  I greatly enjoyed my take-out meal, and I only heard rave reviews about the meal from happy diners leaving the church!  Events like this bring our church together, and bring our community together.

For a closing thought this week, one of the podcasts I listen to is called Words Unravelled, where the hosts explore word origins in an entertaining way. If you are a regular podcast listener, you can find it in your usual podcast app, and I highly recommend giving them a listen. But even if you aren't a podcast listener, they release a video version of the podcast each week - you can hear/watch a recent episode all about the words that we have for our pets by clicking here.

Blessings to you and yours, today and always!

Kate.

Rev. Kate Jones

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

(506) 757-2201 (office)

(506) 343-1307 (mobile)

www.tworiverspastoralcharge.com

Pronouns:  she/her/hers

"Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the law?"

Jesus replied, "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: "You must love your neighbour as you love yourself."

(Matthew 22:36-39)