The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to [Jesus]. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." (Luke 4:17-21)

This Coronavirus 2019 crisis began for us in Canada on Wednesday, March 11, 2020 when the WHO declared it a global pandemic. Within a week, our life had changed drastically. In the church calendar, the season was Lent. The season of giving things up in order to focus on God.

As we begin again into Lent this year, I can't help but think of our Lenten journey of last year. It seems almost that Lent never ended. We got stuck somewhere around Good Friday, but never quite made it into the freedom, light, and life of Easter Sunday.

We passed through not just a pandemic, but a confrontation with deep racial disparities, injustice, and prejudice—not just in the US, not just in Canada, but within our very selves. We witnessed deep political divides and deep divides over how to navigate pandemic restrictions that drove families, churches, and neighbours apart—and that still do. We witnessed a lot of injury, disease, mental health challenges, substance abuse, and death, too.

But into this too-long Lenten journey enters Jesus, speaking the same words spoken at the last funeral in our church. Jesus enters, and in the face of the death, injustice, and divisions before us—he proclaims good news to the poor, hit disproportionately hard by pandemic restrictions; he proclaims freedom for the prisoners of human trafficking; recovery of sight for the blind majority who cannot see their own misery and need for salvation; the setting free of those oppressed by racially biased structures in society; the year of jubilee to effect a true, just, and restorative reconciliation between us all.

"Today," Jesus said, "this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." Jesus was anointed by the Spirit to make these proclamations and also to make them true in the real lives of real people in this world.

Dare we believe that this is the work Jesus is still doing among us? Even now? Even today? Even in the midst of so much death, division, and despair? That Jesus still proclaims the Good News of the Gospel of Salvation in Him, and the promise of freedom, restoration, renewal, and a great setting-right of all things now wrong?

In just that peculiar belief, lies our Christian hope.

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of the season of Lent. But instead of focusing on ourselves and the things we need to give up, confess, or do better in (as we might usually do for Lent), we're going to focus instead on our Christian Hope in these things that God has done, is doing, and will do until they are done.

For us as Christians, that hope begins and ends with Jesus.

I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you (Genesis 28:15).

As promised, we return to this word of God to Jacob, a promise made to him as he fled from his brother's anger.

In my devotion last Tuesday, I wondered how African slaves sold on the American auction block kept hope alive. I'm sure the answer is very complex, but I think we catches glimpses of it in their songs such as Swing Low Sweet Chariot. This is a song about hope and the promised land rooted in biblical promises such as the one we have in our text. God says, I will bring you back to this land.

Remember that I pointed out that Jacob is running for his life. His brother is angry with him. And the anger is justified. Jacob has connived and tricked his brother out of the family birthright and blessing that normally went to the oldest son.

But at the heart of Jacob's action is a lack of faith in God. Rebekah, Jacob's mother, had learned, even before her twins were born, that the older would serve the younger. But instead of allowing God time to fulfill his promise, they had acted together to trick father Isaac and brother Esau.

Yet, God promises to bring Jacob home. And he does it. This theme of God fulfilling his promise in the midst of unbelief continues throughout the Bible. When the people of Israel reach the promised land, they don't believe that God can bring them in. They are banished to the wilderness for a generation, but God brings their children into it.

Later, when Israel refuses to worship God, he threatens to remove them from the land. They don't take him seriously; they keep sinning. Even as God sends Israel into Exile, he promises to bring them back. He will resettle them in the promised land. He had promised Abraham that this land would belong to his children forever. He will keep his promise.

What does all this have to do with Christians today? Well, at least two things. First, it points towards Jesus on the cross. Paul is emphatic, that Christ died for us while we were still sinners, enemies, even, of God. When we read about Israel, we read our own stories. We are saved by grace, nothing else. There is joy in that.

Secondly, we are promised a land as well: a renewed earth. We have something to look forward to. We believe that there is life after death. While the details might be few, one thing is clear, the renew earth will be way better than this one. And God will be with us all the way from here to there.

Those things deserve a party don't they. Put a little celebration into your day today, as you consider the hope we have in God.

That hope of a renewed earth fueled the songs of African slaves in the Americas. It's a hope that belongs to all Christians. It's a hope that we need today.

Tomorrow is the first day of Lent. In these Wilderness Wanderings, we will use Lent to explore the many dimensions of Christian hope. Hope that we enable us to endure in our wildernesses.

A special, extended Sunday Sermon edition of Wilderness Wanderings! The text is John 6:25-59 from the New International Version of the Bible. Dive In discussion questions are below for further reflection!

To see this sermon in the context of the worship service it comes from, find it here on YouTube. Or, head to our website to connect with the worshiping community of Immanuel CRC: immanuelministries.ca

DIVE IN QUESTIONS

1. What are you hungry for?

2. What material or finite things do you attempt to fill your hunger/thirst/longings with?

3. In what way does Jesus' promise of real food, real drink, and real life meet your hunger/thirst/longings?

4. What does Jesus mean when he says: "Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you"? How do we do that eating/drinking? What does he mean by "life in you"?

5. How has this scripture and sermon helped to refresh or challenge your participation in the Lord's Supper?

My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, "Where is your God?" These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go to the house of God under the protection of the Mighty One with shouts of joy and praise among the festive throng. Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. (Psalm 42:3-5)

Back in 2011, I spent some time in Bethlehem immersed in a study of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. A Lutheran church we visited there was partnered with an organization that taught the arts to youth. Dance, painting, drama, poetry. They said, "we often get the question about why, given the pressing needs of just surviving in the midst of so much suffering, why we invest scarce resources in something so seemingly frivolous as the arts."

I'm reminded of that conversation as we pass through this second lockdown. It seems that most of us have switched over into survival mode. Our passions, creativity, and hope for a brighter day just aren't stirred like they were the first time round last Spring. We're tired. We're done. The isolation has flattened our experience and sucked the life and colour out of our days. So we just trudge along in survival mode.

The Psalmist paints a good picture of this: our souls are downcast and disturbed within us. People are wondering and doubting where God is in this whole mess as the church looks back on those days when we "used to go to the house of God." Tears have been a companion as we witness to death and deep pain and illness among our loved ones.

But then in the midst of this work of just surviving through the suffering, the Psalmist turns and talks to their own soul, making a strange, counterintuitive choice. "Put your hope in God my soul, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God."

Why did that organization in Bethlehem invest in training Palestinian youth in the arts? "Because," they said, "when this conflict is over, we'll need to know more than just how to survive, we'll need to know how to live."

When the day comes that this pandemic is over, we too will need to remember how to do more than just survive. We too will need to remember how to live. I don't know of a better way to keep the hope of life in Christ alive within our soul than to face down our dark valleys, disturbed hearts, and downcast souls, and, like the Psalmist, choose to praise the Lord anyway. Even, and especially, when we don't feel like it.

*There won't be a devotion on Monday because of Family Day. We'll resume on Tuesday, then enter into our Lenten series on Ash Wednesday.

I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you (Genesis 28:15).

The Bible is full of promises: from God's promise to Adam and Eve to bring redemption all the way to Jesus promise that he is coming back. The Bible's narrative, one might say, is propelled forward by these promises.

On Tuesday, I spoke about God's promises to Jacob as he fled from his angry twin. The Bible does not portray Jacob as morally or even spiritually upstanding in any way. Throughout his story, his faults are front and centre. It is important to see this, because the Bible is not about upstanding humans whom we ought to emulate. Rather, it is the story of God's faithfulness to unfaithful humans.

So, let's take a look at the promises God made to Jacob and hear them as promises made to us, who are very much like Jacob. We need to hear them in the midst of the mess that life is for us, some of it, of our own making, not from the spiritual mountain tops.

The first part of the promise is that God will be with Jacob as he flees. In Jacob's day, most people believed that the deities only had power in local areas; they had no power outside it. Thus, it is remarkable that God can go with Jacob wherever he ends up. David explores this in Psalm 139, finding comfort in the reality that he cannot escape God's presence.

Jesus leaves his disciples with the same promise as he returns to heaven (Matthew 28:18-20). He gives this promise even though some doubted (17). He makes good on his promise by sending his Holy Spirit. This Spirit reminds us that we are the children of the heavenly father.

The second part of the promise to Jacob is that God will watch over him. Again, it is a promise that Israel as a whole, comes to claim. Psalm 121 is probably the most well known that places this promise into the liturgy of Israel and the church. It became part of the liturgy because it is a difficult thing to believe. We sing it to each other to shore up our faltering belief.

Jesus reworked this promise when he said, "I will build my church" (Matthew 16:18). We know it is part of this promise because Jesus is quick to add, "And the realm of the dead will not overcome it". The church is up against the worst kind of enemy, but Jesus will keep his church. He makes this promise to a group who probably would not be permitted to make 'profession of faith' in our church. They just didn't get who Jesus was, yet the promise is made. And to this day, he has kept it.

God also promises Jacob that Jacob will return to his father's land. God will see it done. God will bring him back. That part of God's promise receives all kinds of layers as the biblical story progresses. Too many layers for us to consider today. We'll save that for next Tuesday.

But let me at least say this about that part of the promise. It ends in a party. So, Tuesday will be party day. And it will lead us into the season of Lent 2021.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1-2)

If life is a race, most of us are bent over in the turf panting for air right now.

It's great that the writer of Hebrews invites us to throw off everything that hinders in order to run that Christian race, but at the moment, the heaviest burdens on our shoulders are not ones that we put there ourselves. The heaviest burdens are imposed on us by the isolation and anxieties of lockdown, or by ugly health journeys with ugly diseases, or by the death of friends and loved ones. So how exactly are we to cast those off?

Well, I think if I were to speak for the writer of Hebrews, to put it bluntly, they'd say: we're not supposed to throw those things off. Sin we cast off, but some other burdens are part of the race itself.

The place we get refreshed for the race is not our own deep well of strength to power through, throw off burdens, or pivot to positive thinking. We get refreshed not by focusing on ourselves, but by zooming out to focus on the larger and longer story of God that we're a part of: the past, present, and future as God has defined them. The invitation of Hebrews is to Memory of the past, Faith in the present, and Hope for the future.

We remember our Lord who himself suffered death and shame, facing the worst of what we face too—he didn't cast it off, he bore it, and he still bears those burdens with us today. We remember too that great cloud of witnesses, those saints and loved ones who dwell now with God. The ones who have gone before us in the faith facing pandemics and plagues, persecution and martyrdom, monotonous days and purposelessness. They surround and cheer us on even now, reminding us not to give up, and that faith in Jesus is never in vain.

Indeed, it's on him that we're invited to fix our eyes—not on the hard path of the race course, nor on our own inability to run it—but on Jesus. The Jesus who is himself with us and working out his purposes in us: perfecting our faith, even here and now.

And the hope is that Jesus will indeed see our faith and our race through to completion. To consummation. To perfection. On that day when he welcomes us home to take our place in the great cloud of witnesses.

We might be winded and burdened right now. The race is hard and the burdens are heavy. So remember then, that you're not alone. Jesus is with you now, and will see you through to the end. Fix your eyes on him in memory, faith, and hope.

I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you (Genesis 28:15).

The Christian faith is deeply rooted in the promises of God. As Hebrews 11 so famously puts it, "Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for" (1-2).

Being a Christian means that we believe there is more to life than this reality, there is more than what we can see with our eyes. There is something better in front of us. The writer of Hebrews tells us that many Old Testament saints were commended for living in this hope.

Would we be commended in the same way?

When I think about the spirituality of African slaves sold in the American marketplace, I think about a people who, while enduring unspeakable horrors, often saw the hope of the Christian gospel. That a strong gospel tradition remains among those so mistreated by those who claimed to be Christian goes beyond all human reason.

But I digress, that is not what this devotional is about. Or maybe it is. You see, our text is a promise which God makes to Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham. And God makes it in the context of Jacob's unbelief.

Here is the story in a nutshell. When Rebekah was pregnant with twins, "they jostled" within her. She asked God why this was happening and was told that the older would serve the younger. This was contrary to the normal cultural practice. As they were growing up, Isaac loved the older, Esau, and Rebekah the younger, Jacob. She wanted Jacob to receive the promise God had made to her but doubted that God could pull it off.

As a result of her doubt, she convinced Jacob to deceive both his father and his twin brother. The ruse worked until it was discovered. Then Jacob's twin vowed to kill his bother. Jacob flees for his life.

It is as Jacob flees that God interrupts his flight, not to send him back but to speed him on his way with the promise that God will bring him back. Jacob was living in the land of promise, now he was fleeing because of his and his mother's unbelief, but God would bring him back.

Wow.

This is the gospel. Despite our disobedience and unbelief God will complete his work of redemption. This is good news for all of us who find ourselves living in the land of sin. We are often tempted to think that our sin has derailed God's work.

Nope.

Despite our sinfulness and lack of faith, God continues to call us back to faith and hope. The fulfillment of his promises is not dependent on us. As Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, "The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it" (5:24).

I will say more about this verse on Thursday. For now, have you given up on God's promises? What would it mean for you to pick them up again? How would it change the way that you live?

For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God's glory displayed in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. (2 Corinthians 4:6-7)

School starts again today! A ray of light in the darkness that says: this lockdown won't last forever! It's certainly something to rejoice about, especially for those of you in school and probably for your parents too!

But, at the same time, this wee bit of reopening is not the kind of hope you can ground your life on. There's always a threat hanging in the air that it might not last. Vaccines are delayed. Variants of the virus are swirling about. The horizon of hope seems uncertain indeed, even if today we find ourselves breathing just a little bit lighter.

That, I think, is why Paul's reminder in 2 Corinthians is a helpful one. Our hope—the light of the gospel of Christ—is not something of our own doing. It's not something that shines forth because of human ingenuity or intervention. Can it shine through those things? Sure, but it doesn't originate there.

Our hope shines forth from Christ. The power is God's. What belongs to us is the jars of clay that are our lives, our bodies, and our world. Fragile vessels that always teeter on the verge of brokenness. We've likely never been quite as collectively aware of that fragility of our lives and society as we are right now. All the grand things we have, are, and do as individuals and even as a society are little more than fragile vessels, jars of clay.

But for those of us who follow Christ, what we hold in our little jars is no small thing at all. We hold the life and light of Christ. The hope of new life and a world restored. The all-surpassing power of forgiveness and healing.

In our little clay vessels, we carry with us the immortal, invincible treasure of the Good News of Jesus Christ, and with it, the hope that one day there will be no more disease to cripple our bodies, plans, and society. No more sadness or anxieties to weigh down our hearts and minds. We carry with us the hope that far better news is yet to come than just schools reopening.

It's not from us or because of us. We are naught but jars of clay. But from God in Christ comes this glory and hope that fills our jars with something real, true, and solid. Thanks be to God.

A special, extended Sunday Sermon edition of Wilderness Wanderings! The text is 1Cointhians 11:17-34 from the New International Version of the Bible. Dive In discussion questions are below for further reflection or discussion!

To see this sermon in the context of the worship service it comes from, find it here on YouTube. Or, head to our website to connect with the worshiping community of Immanuel CRC: immanuelministries.ca

DIVE IN QUESTIONS

1. Compare Acts 2:42-47 with 1 Corinthians 11:17-34.
2. What was going on in Corinth Church?
3. According to Ephesians 2:14-16 and Galatians 3:8, why was this so problematic?
4. Define:
   1. Unworthy Manner
   2. Self-examination
   3. Discerning the Body
5. How might this text be applied in our congregation?

"I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5).

We've been thinking about living in such a way that we finish well. Yesterday, Pastor Anthony reflected on one of the deepest promises of the Scriptures, "God is with us." Today, I want to reflect on a particular aspect of what it means that God is with us.

When we think about finishing well or even starting well, we usually think about what we plan on accomplishing with our lives. In one way or another we are all doers. We want to accomplish something.

When I was growing up on the farm, one of the first tools I learned to use was a broom. On Saturday mornings, I would be assigned sweeping duty. All the alleyways in our barns needed to be swept. My dad would check afterwards and note placed I had missed. Soon, I began to take pride in a clean floor. It was a good morning if dad's keen eyes couldn't find any spots I had missed.

When I became a pastor, I discovered something odd. Preaching a sermon or helping someone through a crisis did not bring the same kind of satisfaction as a well swept floor. There was little capacity to see the fruit of my labours. There was no sense of being finished, having accomplished the task. There was no broom to put back in its corner. I preached sermons, but what impact did they have on the listeners? I rarely knew.

And I was frustrated.

John 15 offered a different framework by which to live: 'remain in me', Jesus says. Here, he gives us a different goal for life than the one the world offers. Rather than focusing on the things we produce; we need to focus on him. This is a deep Christian principle. We often try to be more loving and more joyful and more humble and we try to have more self-control. These are all good things which we ought to strive for. But Jesus says that the road to these things is through 'abiding in him.'

If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

We cannot force ourselves to be more loving or joyful or humbler. This is how God is with us. We are his garden and he works in us and with us and around us so that we produce fruit.

How do we abide in Jesus? Christians have always believed that the two primary ways to abide in Jesus are to read the Bible and to pray to God. There are other important elements as well, such as worshipping with other believers, celebrating the sacraments and giving gifts to the poor. But those two, scripture and prayer, are the primary means.

Sometimes these practices become things we need to accomplish. They become tasks. Then its time to step back and recall what they are, means to abide in Jesus. Remember Pastor Anthony's recent question, "How is your love life…with God?"

Reading scripture and prayer are about that, about abiding in our Lord and Saviour. And after abiding, God produces fruit in us. Abiding in him is the goal of our lives.