St Timothy Presbyterian Church in Toronto: Sermons

Scripture: John 11:40

What does faith do in our lives? Faith gives us new eyes. Faith gives us insight. Faith helps us see the things that we did not see beforehand. That was what Jesus said in today's passage. Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God? (John 11:40) If we believe, we will see the glory of God. If we have faith, we will be able to see what is good in life. Today's story is about Jesus raising the dead Lazarus. If you have time, please try to read the whole chapter 11. When you look at the scene, they all saw death. They all smelled death. When Jesus said to take away the stone of the grave, Martha said: Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days. (John 11: 39) That was when Jesus said, Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God? (John 11:40)

It is similar to what we reflected last week: the born blind man. People only saw the sin of the born blind man, but Jesus saw the hands of God working in him. Faith gives us new eyes and with these new eyes we see what is good.

Faith is the light in a world of darkness 

Hebrews writer said this. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1) Faith gives us the assurance of what we hope for. Through faith we will have the conviction that things will work out all right even though we don't see it yet. Every day, we hear threatening news. I don't think the media just sensationalizes the fear but nevertheless what they tell us is threatening. Every day, the virus becomes stronger. More people get infected and more deaths we see. The virus infects everyone: the young and old,  movie celebrities, princes, and the prime minister. In Italy, so many people died and the military had to be brought in to move the bodies to the neighboring village. We are surrounded by darkness. Surrounded by death. Surrounded by fear and worries. This is when we need faith. Faith that gives us new eyes. Faith helps us see hope. Faith lets us see the glory of God. Jesus who raised Lazarus from the dead is right here with us.

Faith grows from suffering 

Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live (John 11:25) Even if you die, you will live. Jesus is saying that Death does not have the final say. Death will not drive us into devastation and fear. If my soul is alive, we will live even though we die. It is faith that makes our soul alive. How can we have faith? Faith is not something you decide to have. It is not about your will and your decision. Faith grows mysteriously within us. And I believe that suffering has a lot to do with the growth of our faith. Suffering makes our faith grow. Suffering awakens us and when we have a right attitude in our suffering, faith grows within us. What is that right attitude? The right attitude is the desire to know God and trust God. When suffering is combined with the right attitude, faith grows within us. And with the faith, we can see beautiful things in the midst of our suffering. In the midst of ashes we can see beautiful flowers. We can see not only death but the goodness, warmth, and sacrificial attitude of people. We can see that in the front-line workers who try to save people's lives, risking their own.

In France, last Tuesday, people came out onto the balcony and clapped for the front-line workers. It was a beautiful image. One woman shouted out, Bravo to Caregivers! This attitude spread and it happened in Italy, Spain, Britain, and Canada. Somebody said, Not all heroes wear capes, the real heroes wear scrubs. Even in this crisis, we see the beautiful love people show to each other. Not only doctors and nurses, but also people working at grocery stores who help give us essential food, paramedics, TTC drivers, and to all those people who are working so hard to fight against the virus and give us advice to point us in the right direction. While some businesses do despicable things such as jacking up the price of wipes, there are people who give helping hands. Evangel Hall asked us whether we could provide gift cards from the grocery stores instead of coming out and serving the meal. Simon will put it out on our website, asking for donations. I think it is time for us to be kind to each other. 

Faith humbles us 

Through the eyes of faith, we can also see how weak and fragile we are. We have no choice but to be humble. We have realized that the walls we have built around us to protect ourselves are not indestructible. We are not invincible. Our economy is not invincible. Everything can collapse in an instant moment. Let us see that God is our wall; God is our fortress; God is our refuge; and God is our shield. With the eyes of faith, we should be able to see this. We need God's mercy. We can see how precious it is to have God's mercy. We also need to be kind and merciful to each other. That's what we need. When we have eyes of faith, we can overcome our challenges. We will get through this crisis. We will come out stronger. My friends, with the eyes of faith, let us see, again, the glory of God.

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For the full details and chatbox for this worship service, please go to the Sunday Worship link.

John 9:1-3, 32-34, 40-41

The disciples saw a man blind from birth when they were walking with Jesus. The first thought that came to their minds was whose sin was it that caused this man born blind? Was it his sin or his parents' sin? If that was the first thought the disciples had, then most people would have had the same thought when they saw this man. Then this man must also have had this question about himself all his life. Why was I born with this stigma? What is wrong with me? Instead of thinking that I am precious and beloved, he must have felt very bad and sinful about himself.

Confront difficulties 

Whenever we face difficulties in life, we ask ourselves, why me? Why do these things happen to me? What did I do wrong? We all live with some kind of guilt. We have darkness within us. We live feeling our own shortcomings and weaknesses. And when we face difficult situations, all these negative things about ourselves rise to the surface and we have no choice but to confront them. Confronting negative things about ourselves is not a bad thing. This Covid-19 revealed our fear, our limits, our selfishness, and our emptiness. To social distance, we stay home all day and we have more opportunities to think about our life and ourselves. We have had no choice but to stop our busy schedules. We thought that life would always turn out as we planned but we have realized that that is not true. Our naive thinking that we can control our lives as we want and as we wish, was shattered. The reality is that our life can be stopped and disrupted any time without any warning. Many people have experienced the fragility of their lives in the fact that their business and jobs can go down the drain just like that.

Exposing the things we take for granted 

 We can just waste our time doing nothing at home and giving no thought to our life but I hope that we can take this opportunity to really think about our life again. It is a great opportunity to be able to think about what is really important in life, what is most precious to us, and where God is in our lives. We realize how many things we have taken for granted. Spending time with friends and family is a simple thing to do but we cannot do it now. We realize how precious those things are. We took for granted things that are so important and precious. Even though those things are so very simple, we can no longer do them and we realize how much we have taken for granted in life.  

Let me share what our congregation members said. One person said: We have an opportunity to look deep, to unearth fears, hopes, regrets and grief. We can look deep to see what we feel, what we hope and how we can make our lives more faithful to God and to ourselves.  Maybe we will learn something in the midst of this “downtime”. Another said: Crazy times indeed.  In a weird way, outside of all the turmoil and uncertainty, there is a “blessing inside this curse.” I think this time allows us to really reevaluate what is important and meaningful in this world and drives home the points that we discussed during the YF retreat.   Another said: While it's easy to get lost in worry and feel isolated from the world, we are fortunate that we have a community that brings people together to reflect and pray.  

God’s work in our lives 

The disciples asked whose sin it was for him to be born blind and others also asked the same question, and the man also might have lived with that question in mind all his life. But Jesus' answer was so refreshing; Jesus said, Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him. (John 9:3) Jesus didn't see his sin but saw what God was doing in this man's life.

This crisis reveals not only our shortcomings and our fears but also what God is doing in our lives. I pray that this crisis brings us closer to God. That our eyes will be open and see what God is doing in our lives. We will see how precious life is. We will see how valuable life is. We will see how important it is for us to be more kind to each other, to be more thankful, and to appreciate the more simple things in life.

This man was healed not only physically but spiritually. Not only did his physical eyes become open but the eyes of his heart became open. If you have time read all of John chapter 9. You will see the progress of his change. You will see his courage. After he was healed he was able to live with courage. He overcame his fear and now he was filled with courage. Open your eyes and live with courage.

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Due to national efforts to contain the COVID-19 virus, we took the unprecedented of cancelling the in-person worship service and recording it for online worship instead. Please pray for the world as we deal with this crisis, may God’s peace be with us.

Hold on a beautiful prayer. That was, We hear a lot about self-isolation. These days, many people are doing quarantine. They advise people who are traveling outside of Canada, including us to take two weeks of quarantine time. You read you have mild symptoms of a cold. They tell us to stay home. When a person is healthy or it has the potential to have the virus that person can have a quarantine. When the person finds out that he or she has a virus and he or she has to do self-isolation, people say that that is the right term to use. Trudeau’s wife, Sophie Trudeau at first quarantine herself, after a trip to London, then she was tested positive and she’s taking self-isolation and our prime minister Trudeau is taking a two-week quarantine. You do self-isolation or quarantine for other people, not necessarily for yourself, young and healthy people. Even if they’re infected with the coronavirus, they may have only mild symptoms and can recover very easily. But when they give that to vulnerable people, they can cause fetal damage. And that’s why we do self-isolation or quarantine.

We thought that he, wasn’t very rare that an asymptomatic person can infect others, but now they discover that it is possible that asymptomatic person can also infect others. One thing we are cautious about is viruses because we don’t really know very well about this virus. The sad thing is in many places go, hospitals cannot take any more old. And we people who have the virus and anymore, because they don’t have beds and ventilators, they need to use these beds and ventilators for those who have a higher chance to survive. So they just leave them to die. That’s what happens when there are so many patients and therefore our health system cannot handle it. So the best way is to step to stop the spread earlier. It is important to flatten the curve, but the alienation is different. In the 17th century, Venice health workers searched the city and identified clay victims and shipped him off to abroad, to so-called hospital, where two-thirds of them die. That is alienation. The woman we slide into this scripture did not have science, self-isolation. She was alienated. She was alienated from the people of the village in alienating is painful. When you are alienated, you get scared of people. You don’t want to meet people. This morning, this woman came out at 12 noon. That is not the time to water to get water in some areas. They came up early in the morning. Usually, women did it, but they came up very early in the morning. Then not only they got water, but they also talk and the church had it together and have a great fellowship. But this woman came out at 12 noon on purpose because she knew that there will be no. She was afraid of meeting people.

Do you just come to this woman who felt so alienated? That’s who Jesus is. Jesus reaches out to those raided, abandoned, and ostracized. This woman was not kind and friendly to Jesus. At first, she wasn’t blunt. When Jesus said, I’ll give you the living water and she said you have no bucket and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? But as the conversation got deeper, she realized that she just knew everything about her. That is Jesus for love. Jesus knows us very well. He loves us. Not because he doesn’t know us, even though he knows us so well, he still loves us. He knows our secrets, our weaknesses or shortcomings, and our dark. Yes and then in love sucks and Jesus treated her as those shorts as a car, they were talking to them about all the important subjects, including the worship because she was interested in worship.

When you see that she was not just an ordinary woman, she said our ancestors worship on the mountain on this mountain. But you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem. And Jesus said the hour is coming. When you will worship the father, either on this mountain, or in Jerusalem, but in spirit and truth. When you read a passage very carefully, you see the development of this woman’s understanding of Jesus. At first, she said you’re Jewish or Jewish, and then sooner or later you’re Pravin. And in the end, she said, you are the ms side. As we build our relationship with Jesus, our understanding of Jesus gets paper. We come to a deeper understanding of Jesus and this understanding somehow frees us from our alienation. It becomes free from our failure after the conversation, what did she, uh, what did the woman to she throw away the water jar and went back to the village people or are they feel the very reason why she came out to draw water at? They weren’t the very people who alienator there were the people that she was very afraid of the meeting, but once she was freed from that fear shit, when back to the people and talked about it, Jesus, the fear is gone. She became free from alienation. Sometimes we feel lonely. Sometimes we feel that nobody understands us. Nobody loves us. And nobody cares for us. That’s when we experience deep loneliness. And that is when Jesus comes to us and Jesus tells us, I am with you. And he touched us. He heals us from loneliness, What Jesus did to us. They shouldn’t do it to each other.

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