November 16, 2025 Reflection

As we continue our worship theme of Change Makers, the focus for today is empowerment. I had initially planned on speaking about how we, like Jesus, can seek to empower others, to somehow offer strength and capacity to those who might be faltering. But as sometimes happens, the Holy Spirit seized control of my keypad and suddenly the focus of worship and this sermon became not how we empower others, but how we are empowered by God.

And thank God for that, because I know these days many of us aren’t feeling particularly empowered under our own steam. There is a weariness in the air, in many cases an overwhelmedness with perhaps calendars that are too full, responsibilities that weigh heavy, worries that keep us up at night. And who wouldn’t be worried – it often feels like that world is going to hell in an extremely heavy hand basket.

Fabulous, funny and poignant Christian writer, Anne Lamott posted recently: “Brothers and sisters, here we are, clueless about what the future holds but knowing who holds the future. I wonder if it would be so much skin off Their divine nose to let us know how everything is going to shake down, so that we can make advantageous plans. But noooo, that is not the system. The system is that on some days God’s will [seems to] unspool in the ways of a surrealist, non-linear movie director, with PMS. Other days, we feel hilariously abundant love and grace, grace as spiritual W-D 40 that against all odds, and I mean ALL odds, pokes its thin red straw into our darkest and most clenched spaces, and offers release. …If I were God’s West Coast representative, (Anne goes on to say) I would have a much more organized system, all sad and weird events were in the knife slot in your silverware drawer, joy and peace where the big forks go, acceptance of the mystery in the salad fork slot, resentments and the desire for revenge in with the teaspoons.” But life isn’t organized like that and in the midst of it all Anne writes, there is little we can do but trust and surrender.” (Anne Lamott in thecorners@substack.com)

All we can do is trust and surrender. So much hangs on how we frame that simple sentence. All we can do is trust and surrender might seem such a small thing, like a giving up. Or, ALL we can do, everything we can do, is trust and surrender, might seem mightily magnificent. 

Either way, it reminds me of my second most favourite words of Scripture, words that ground me in the most downcast and frenzied times.

“…my soul is bereft of peace;

and I have forgotten what happiness is…

The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is

wormwood and gall!…

But this I call to mind,

     and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of God never ceases,

    God’s mercies never come to an end;

they are new every morning;

    great is your faithfulness.

“The holy One is my portion,” says my soul,

    “therefore I will hope in God.”

Faith can sustain us in moments of great loss and struggle. When I am at my lowest, I recall this passage from Lamentations, that no matter how catastrophic a turn the world, or my life, seems to be taking, God’s faithfulness is great. New mercies will be offered each day. This is what I call to mind when I can’t marshal up the energy to hang on to my faith, let alone help anyone else hold on. When my grip is too weak, when it begins to slip through my fingers, God doesn’t let me go. God pulls me through the narrow passages, the knotholes of life, the edge of the cliff and back onto the safe ledge of hope, of trust, of possibilities for another start. Because it’s not my faith in God that keeps me going, it’s knowing that God has faith in me.

The Biblical phrase ‘faith in Jesus’ or ‘faith in God’ can be translated also as ‘faith of Jesus’ or ‘faith of God’. The faith of Jesus in us. The faith of God in us. Imagine, that God and Christ could find us trustworthy. Could even count on us to be trustworthy.  Imagine living as people who actually believe that God places God’s trust in us, that God has faith in us.  Just let that sink in a bit. God trusts you. Jesus has faith in you. They believe we are good enough, as is.

 It’s such a relief that I don’t need to just rely on my faithfulness to maneuver through life’s challenges. Our faith, like a capricious flirt, can fly out the window when we’re under pressure, or when life is so good that faith seems redundant. That I can count on God’s faithfulness to me, God’s faith in me, rather than my faithfulness to and faith in God, gives me the capacity to breathe a bit easier. To contemplate that God in Christ has faith in me, that God trusts me, causes my soul to rise up and my shoulders roll back and my heart believe that I am a beloved and trusted child of God and my efforts, my best efforts or the weakest that I can muster, are all received as trust-worthy, as validation of God’s confidence that I will lean always, or maybe only eventually, towards living into God’s faith and trust.

             I have for years struggled with understanding God’s agency, how God acts in the world. We can’t believe that God reaches down and intervenes directly, no matter how many times we find just the right parking spot. To believe that God arranges us like chess pieces on a board allows for too many inconsistencies – why then didn’t and doesn’t God act in the most horrific circumstances – from a child lingering with a terminal illness to the Holocaust or massive droughts and deaths around the world? If indeed God is the Divine Manager of all things

then where the hell is God in Sudan, in Israel and Palestine, in the alleys of the downtown eastside?

God doesn’t magically fix things. What God does do, I believe, is give us strength and courage, wisdom and creative capacities, to take on the challenges of the world and be part of bending history towards justice. God empowers us, so that we can empower others. And God trusts that we will indeed do that, when we’re feeling steady on our own feet.

Our faith in God, and God’s faith in us, is a deep well of the most sustaining water that we return to again and again in order to carry on. I have seen this in so many of the congregations I’ve served. Indomitable strength grounded in faith. God entrusts God’s deepest yearnings into your hands. And you open your arms and carry those yearnings and care for those yearnings as the precious cargo they are. And when you falter, you return to the well of God’s sacred faith and trust in you, and eventually are empowered to start over again, refreshed.

            And, the hope of Lamentation carries with it a challenge. In our mutual faithfulness, there is just no way on God’s green earth that we can get away from the call to be risk-bearers and change-makers. The author of Lamentation is mourning the end of the world as he or she has known it. The country has been overrun and the Temple destroyed. Although our churches are declining in much less dramatic fashion, we are none the less able to see an end on the horizon.  Former Moderator Peter Short has spoken about how leaders of the church are metabolizing the humiliation, the dissolution of the church as we know it. All congregations are in some kind of transition, and if they are not in the process of undergoing transformation, it’s possible they’re facing termination. All are being called to new life, which ironically includes loss and endings and risk, which we of course will resist. It’s human nature to do so.  The fulness of the kindom of God is straining to break in, here and now. God is trusting us to be part of it. God has faith in us to be part of it. But it won’t come without risk and release.

            I believe that the words of Lamentation speak to our despair, and to our hope. They name what is lost, and, they ground us in a reminder of God’s faithfulness. The words call us to listen to creation crying out, and to be alert to the new mercies being offered each day. We can trust the God who trusts in us. We can have faith in the faithfulness of God.

“But this I call to mind,

     and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of God never ceases,

    God’s mercies never come to an end;

they are new every morning;

    great is your faithfulness.

“The holy One is my portion,” says my soul,

    “therefore I will hope in God.”

Thanks be to God. Amen