Metropolitan United Church

Isaiah in a happy moment.  This is good.  I've been finding the Prophets of the Old Testament very intriguing, lately, but I must admit that a bit of lightheartedness is very, very welcome, especially as it gets colder out.

"One who dies at a hundred will be considered a youth."  That's very good news.  I'm  teaching a new undergraduate course starting in January, and those undergraduates are awfully young: in fact, they get younger every year.

Haggai.  I can honestly say that I have never opened the book of Haggai.  I'd never even heard of Haggai: when I saw the listing, I thought to myself, "we must be getting into the Apocrypha, or something.  But no, Haggai is a part of the canonical Old Testament, and according to my study bible notes, he wasn't half bad, as prophets go.  Apparently, people actually listened to him: perhaps because he respected the notion of the sound byte, and kept his message short.

Wow. I've never read Joel before. That's interesting. According to my Bible's notes, this book reports "the devastating effect of a locust infestation and the people's heeding the prophetic call to turn to God, which evokes the LORD's removal of the plague and complete transformation of curse to blessing."

Just the other night, I watched an old favourite of mine: Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds." People often laugh at it now, because the special effects are primitive by today's standards. But I still find it deeply moving and terrifying: moving because the gathering birds seem to represent gathering feelings of frustration and desolation within the minds of the characters, and terrifying because the natural world suddenly rises up and takes revenge on us.

I saw a T-shirt once, that said on the front: "Christ is coming.  Look busy."  Flippant as the message was, it resembles my nervous response to the words of Jeremiah and Paul.

Jeremiah says, the time is coming when God will make a new covenant.  Then, things will be better.  Paul says, the time is coming when people will stray from the covenant with itchy ears, looking for people who tell them what they want to hear.  Either way, the time is coming.  Be prepared.

I've never dipped into Jeremiah before this recent cycle of OT lectionary readings. I find him fascinating. Parts of the book are so mournful that they feel like bottled, distilled sadness. Real, genuine, full-strength, three-in-the-morning, racked-with-regrets sadness. And other parts are... well, bad-tempered, to say the least. The prophets are uncomfortable that way. They tell us that sometimes, it's not enough to live within the law and mean no harm. If Jeremiah were alive today, he'd probably be perched on an overpass over the DVP, railing at the rush-hour traffic, warning us that we're ruining the environment. And I don't think he'd be impressed with our guilty shrugs and our replies of "well, I don't mean any harm, and you've gotta live in the world, you know. And just for the record, I DID buy my fruit from local farmers. At least I'm eating my view."

TORONTO MENDELSSOHN CHOIR

Concert: Sunday, November 4, 3 pm.

On behalf of the Congregational Care Committee, I have secured a block of seats for the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir's November 4 Concert: "Raised in Song: Great Hymns and Choruses," starting at 3 pm. at Yorkminster Park Baptist Church. (See description below)

Acts 5: 27-32

Revelation 1:4-8

John 20: 19-32

The readings for this week make me nervous. Revelation--well, Revelation always makes me nervous. Great poetry, great images, but I wouldn't want to be on that author's list of enemies. Nor am I really sure I'd want to be his friend.

The other readings make me nervous, because they're apologies for behaviour that I sort of admire, but also distrust. Peter and the gang in Acts say "We must obey God rather than any human authority." OK. But it does make life awkward for anyone in middle management, and it's a mindset that could get out of hand. "Sorry," says the employee. "You want me to clean out the downstairs lavatories. But God wants me to extend my coffee break. I'm really caught between a rock and a hard place, here."

I was at another church for vigil this evening, and we sat for nearly an hour in silence in the sanctuary.

One thing it made me feel: it's a long time between Good Friday and Easter Morning.

I had the vague notion that we should all be still; that we should meditate in silence until we'd reached a state of transcendent stillness that would make us receptive for the joys of Easter morning.  But it didn't work out that way for me.  My mind was racing.  And the traffic outside the church was zipping by, honking and bustling.  In the presence of death, the survivor's mind works overtime: working out practicalities, adjusting to a new reality, unable to process all the stuff that's going on.  The world bustles on outside the window, and the brain races around inside your head.  Even the clock ticks relentlessly.  The only unmoving thing is the body.  The only thing that's still is the thing that's lost.

It's just about impossible to miss Christmas. The great engine of the economy demands that I keep Christmas.

Lent is different. So far, the merchandisers at Canadian Tire and Winners have not yet found a way to turn Maundy Thursday into a holiday demanding expensive gifts. Palm branch suppliers experience an upturn in business, to be sure, and the Easter bunny provides us with our weekly rationale for eating more chocolate than we should.

Congratulations to Andrew and the whole team for getting the website up and running. It looks great!

We heard a lot about donkeys this morning, during the service, and how they are lowly creatures, humble, and the very antithesis of temporal political power. One other thing: they have a reputation for being among the world's most obstinate creatures. Perhaps that's a lesson, too. Low, humble, overlooked, and next to impossible to budge.