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This Week's Sermon !

December 7, 2025 Advent 2

Isaiah 11: 1-10
Psalm 72
Matthew 3: 1-12

Peace, Perfect Peace

There is a song that just about everyone who has been in church knows, it’s to the tune of Edelweiss, which is now over half a century old. At some time. Someone, somewhere wrote new words to that tune and it became very popular in church circles. One of those new lines goes, “Peace, perfect peace, courage in every endeavour.” The problem is, we are not allowed to sing it! Rogers and Hammerstein wrote the music and words to Edelweiss specifically for the musical, “the Sound of Music”. It’s not actually a favourite song of the Austrian people at all, though it was written to sound like one. First of all, it’s in English not Austrian-German which it would have been if it was a popular folk-song! The estates of Messers Rogers and Hammerstein have decided to deny permission to any words sung to that tune and any other tune to the original words. So, despite the fact that it is widely available, and well known, the copyright holders will turn you down if you ask for permission!

But edelweiss is a real flower, the national flower of Austria and Switzerland and is on the list of protected species. It is symbolic of purity, courage and the mountains of Europe.

We are in the season of Advent, a sacred season of expectant waiting. It is a season in which we listen to scriptures that tell us that the bad we see around us does not have the last word and is not the end of the story. Advent tells us that the disappointment we feel does not need to be the end. This ending of the Advent story has yet to be written - but it is a story as old as time itself. Each time we observe it, we add another chapter to the story of waiting for God’s promises to come to pass.

The great prophet, Isaiah writes about a shoot springing from the stump of Jesse. Jesse was the father of the great King David. Despite his many shortcomings, Jesse’s son was regarded as the greatest King Israel ever had and after the defeat of their nation - for generations, upon generations, people believed that his descendant was going to to once again occupy the throne and lead their nation to greatness.

I could tell at least one story about roots and shoots, for every house in which I have lived. There were the weeds I finally tired of trying to kill only to discover that they were a pretty plant called “bleeding hearts”. There was the manse where I had to deal with maple shoots coming from just about everywhere, including under the doorsteps, even though the trees themselves wwere gone. At that same house a crop of bamboo clung to life even though I tried to get rid of it every year. On the front lawn of the manse in Dundas PEI was a black locust tree, or rather for the most of the time I lived there, the stump of a black locust. Every spring shoots would spring from the stump and produce beautiful foliage. If I left it too long though the soft two inch thorns on the stems hardened and became very nasty to remove. At another manse was a lilac bush just in front of the bay window. I wanted to move the bush and decided to dig it up so I could move some of it to a place in the lawn further from the house. What I discovered was that several ministers in a row had simply cut the bush down and allowed it to grow back from the roots - the root ball was enormous! Finally, after much digging, I had it out and a much smaller bush a few feet away. I think I managed to kill all the rogue shoots that sprang up around the window and tried to keep it well mowed and trimmed, but it took some effort.

When I bought a brand new house I had to contend with the fact that there was so little topsoil on the property in which to grow anything and I had a hard time getting anything to overwinter. Some of my neighbours spent a lot of time and money building up their soil.

It seems ironic that weeds grow everywhere but the plants we want are delicate and require care. This leads me to ask the question about caring for this shoot from the stump of Jesse. How do we facilitate its growth?

As the Gospel’s tell us, John the Baptizer, distant cousin of Jesus, ended his public career as a wilderness preacher. His message was a call to repentance, the sign of which was baptism. He revived that ages old expectation for a new king on David’s throne. You can imagine how a promise that remains unfulfilled for generations would tend to fizzle and be dismissed as “wishful thinking,” or “an old wives’ tale”.

The main image in the Gospel passage is one of road building. The passage quoted from Isaiah, “Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight, wasn’t just a metaphor. It referred to special preparations made for the visit of a high official or a king.

I remember a visit from Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip when I was very young - it was probably 1973, PEI’s centennial year. A certain floor of the Charlottetown, a stately grand old Hotel in that city was renovated and redecorated for the Royal Couple. I thought they should stay at the residence of the Lieutenant-Governor but no! As I recall, some weeks before, an advance party came to evaluate the preparations and determined that the Royals deserved better. New furniture was ordered. I believe they tried to recoup some of the costs by auctioning the furniture after the Royals returned to Buckingham Palace, but the rule of thumb was, and is, “only he best” for royalty. The people of Judea and surrounding areas would have known about the kind of preparations necessary for a Roman Official. Without heavy earth moving equipment, it would have been very labour intensive.

When the Olympics or Expo is due to be hosted in a particular city lots of preparations will need to be made. Often low income housing is converted to accommodate the hordes of tourists expected to attend, but once the event is over, the landlords can demand higher rents than the previous tenants can afford and the social disruption is enormous. One of my classmates was working in a poor area of Vancouver during Expo 86 and tried to be of support to those whose lives were disrupted by it. The city wanted its poor to just “go away” so their city would look better for the thounsands of tourists arriving for the festivities. Such events are never an easy time for the poor of the cities showing off for the world.

One of the things I find both sad and frustrating is that the poor and those in need are thought about only at Christmas time; as if they don’t have to eat in March! Or October! We think only of peace when war is being wages between countries, not when we know people are being oppressed for not being the same as those who have the power.

Lots of people claim to put a lot of effort into the coming of the messiah but I wonder if those efforts are really for the cause of promoting peace and good will, or not.

So we have Jesus’ distant cousin John becoming a popular preacher out in the wilderness. Great throngs followed him to the wilderness in order to see and hear him. They had noting to lose, and everything to gain, in embracing this promise. Those who did have something to lose were the Pharisees and Sadducees, and it is clear that John worried them; they did not need anyone rocking the boat. John did not trust them either! Did you notice that John called them “a brood of vipers!”

What if I had begun my sermon today with, “You nest of snakes. Do you think you can get into heaven by just coming to church and saying the right things? No you have to walk the walk and ACT like your have actually repented. In case you don’t know repentance in not just “feeling bad” about something but ACTING in a different way! To repent is to turn around and go in a different direction. You will never get to Amherst from here if you take the exit for Truro.

I’ve actually tried to begin my Advent sermon like that more than once, but I usually reserve it for my last Advent, in a pastoral charge, not my first!

We have heard a lot of news in the last couple of years from Israel and Gaza. The destruction and loss of life is unfathomable. The people often forgotten in the news though from that troubled area are the Palestinian Christians. In years gone by, many Christians from the west would make a pilgrimage to Bethlehem at Christmas time. It was probably a “bucket list” kind of thing. Last week, I Googled “Holy Land tours” but even though they seem to be offered I don’t think I would go this year, even if it was free!

On Tuesday I watched a video from a church in Ramallah, the administrative centre of Palestine. They proclaimed themselves as the “Land of Christmas” and broadcast a candle lighting - from one of the most troubled and dangerous spots on earth - to the Christians of the rest of the world. They are obviously a people who do not cease to speak their truth and speak their message of good will to all and peace on earth.

At more than one point during his time as Moderator the Very Rev Stan MacKay, a member of the Cree First Nation from Manitoba said that while we often refer to Israel and Palestine as the Holy Land, it is important to view the places in which we live, in Canada, or elsewhere, as “holy land”.

It is in these lands that we experience the presence of God. It is in these places that we are challenged to bring the message of hope, peace, joy and love. How can we look out at the Bay of Fundy while we eat fresh scallops and lobster, and not feel the power of Creation. How can we not look at a field of booming potatoes and marvel at creation, or stand on the Blomidon look-off to look at the valley below and not see the blessings of the Creator. Or a a field of canola in Saskatchewan, yellow blooms in every direction as far as the eye can see or walk on a train bridge in the Columbia Mountains and marvel at the diversity of this great land. And not feel small in comparison!

The reality is that we do not have to go somewhere else to see and experience the blessings of God or to find opportunities to serve. We do not have to have lived in another time to have been able to proclaim Good News in word and deed to those who are in need of such a message.

Christmas is about Jesuc coming in Bethlehem all those years ago, but it is also about us experiencing the rebirth of Emmanuel (or God with us) here in this part of Nova Scotia, this year and in our lives AND about desiring a better future for all.

Amen!

1995- 2021 The Rev. Beth W. Johnston.

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