Hi everyone,
Welcome to our worship service for this 2nd Sunday in Lent, which will land on March 16, 2025!
The bulletin for this service can be found here. You can use it as a guide to help you follow along with the service, or you can use the words that will appear on your screen. The bulletin will also have the full sermon manuscript which is also found on this page below the worship video.
If you’d like an enhanced online worship experience, you are invited to have a candle in your space, lit at the beginning of the service and extinguished near the end at the same time as the altar candles are extinguished after the sending hymn. You are also welcome to participate in communion if you are comfortable by having something small to eat and drink prepared. Further instruction will be given at the appropriate time of the service.
May God’s rich blessing fill you with love and hope, this day and always!
O Lord may our minds and hearts be opened by your Spirit, that we can humbly hear and heed to your true and unchanging Word, Jesus Christ, through whom we pray. Amen.
Did you ever have an experience with a “golden child”? I talking about those people who are favoured, extraordinarily loved, and seen as though they could do no wrong. Maybe it’s a sibling or another member of your family who can get away with bloody murder while you’re blamed for everything. Maybe it is a coworker or colleague who is always praised for their work and gets all the promotions and raises while you only get scraps. Or maybe it’s just that member of society that is looked up to and respected by the masses when in actual fact, you know that they are completely undeserving of any of those accolades that they are being given. Those are the people that I’m talking about when I say “golden child”.
And don’t you hate those kinds of people? Those arrogant, egotistical, self-centred people? Those that ride the coat tails of their privilege and luck? Those that have become so used to winning that they constantly expect it and have the audacity to call foul when it doesn’t happen? Yeah, those people.
We wish they would get theirs. We wish their comeuppance will come up and smack them down a few notches. We wish they would just see the error of their ways and learn a little… humility.
Now you might be thinking, wow, this guy sure has a vendetta against these golden children, what bad experience has he had with them?
And you wouldn’t be wrong, I have met quite a number of people like this throughout my years, and I’ve been annoyed at them all. But it wasn’t until I found myself labelled as someone’s golden child that I realised how much hate there actually is for them. Or us, as it were.
See, back when the dinosaurs still roamed the earth, I spent a lot of time in school, training to be all that you see here before you today. I know right, worth it. And to pay for that school, I got myself a temporary job in retail that turned into 12 years of mostly full time hours. During that time, I somehow caught the eye of my manager who, at a staff meeting of all places, literally pointed right at me and announced me as his favourite. And let me tell you, that day I learned the fear of death. I mean the amount of dirty looks, jeers, and mockery that came my way after being outed as the favourite was truly telling. No one likes a golden child. Especially if it isn’t them.
And I didn’t even really want to work there.
But that didn’t stop people assuming that I was super arrogant and egotistical. It didn’t stop my co-workers from jumping on any opportunity to tell my manager about my mistakes, how I’ve failed, and that I should be taken down a few notches. It didn’t stop them from hating on me because I was given this label that I didn’t ask for or even want.
Now I should say that this isn’t some unresolved trauma for me or anything. I’m not telling you this for you to feel sorry for me or as a way for me to heal from the experience. And I’m certainly not trying to brag about my short stint as someone’s golden child.
But I’m trying to point out this attitude that we might have with some people. Sure, maybe I was harsh in saying that we hate them, but we really do have some people that could do without, don’t we? Like we might feel frustrated with all they have, we might feel cheated because they’re so lucky, we might even like we’ve been unfairly treated because we think we deserve what they got more than they do.
And I sometimes wonder if that attitude translates into our faith. Maybe not in an intentional way, of course, but don’t we sometimes look down on the Pharisees as Israel’s golden people? Don’t we sometimes wonder how Jesus could love Jerusalem, the city that kills prophets, so much? Aren’t we sometimes baffled at how God could love them? “Them” of course being those who are undeserving, aren’t as good as they let off, those golden children that everyone seems to love.
I mean, think about how we might have reacted to today’s reading out of Luke. In this story that we get at least every three years but don’t really know much about, we hear of Jesus being warned that Herod is out to get him. But did you catch who it was that warned him? In a blink and you’ll miss it moment, we hear that it was the Pharisees. Whaaaat? We might automatically wonder why they’re helping Jesus out here?
Because when we hear “Pharisee,” we hear they’re not fair, you see. We think enemies of Jesus. We think people undeserving of God’s grace. So what are they trying to prove here? Are they just brown nosing, sucking up to Jesus to get some blessing out of him? The nerve. The worst part though, is knowing Jesus he’ll probably fall for it. You know, with him being so forgiving and all.
We see it with Jesus’ lament right after the warning too, saying how Jerusalem is so unwilling to listen, so blinded to the truth, so unable to not kill prophets, we wonder why would he even bother. Why would he give so much to those who don’t care? Why save them? Why bless these who don’t deserve it? Save those blessings for us, am I right?
And that’s the thing… what makes us think that we deserve it?
Sure, maybe we didn’t kill any prophets like Jerusalem, but haven’t we shunned God’s word for us? Maybe we don’t arrogantly throw our religious weight around like the Pharisees, but don’t we sometimes put our faith before the good of others? Maybe we don’t deny that Jesus is Lord like all those heathens out there, but don’t we often favour other lords over to rule our lives?
We’re in the season of Lent, a season of examination and reflection. Not so much of others, mind you, even though that comes much easier for us, but of ourselves. We use this time to see where we are failing, where we fall short, where we might have unresolved sin in our lives. And if we don’t see them or can’t find them, that doesn’t mean that we’re doing good, it just means we aren’t looking hard enough.
As it turns out, we might be our own golden child. We might make concessions for our own attitudes. We might make excuses for our own actions. We might make justifications for the ways that we turn away from God, telling ourselves that we’re ok and that it is everyone else who is wrong.
And I get it, it’s really hard to see ourselves like that. It is so much easier to point outward and say that we totally know the kind of people that I’m talking about, that it’s them. But never us.
But Jesus says in today’s texts that isn’t exactly the case. He calls out the sins of the chosen people. He points out the ways in which we justify and make excuses for our actions. He reveals to them and us just how sin has permeated throughout all of life, telling us that we’re ok, fooling us into an attitude of superiority, tricking us in thinking that we can’t do any wrong so we don’t need God.
And so we need this season of Lent to remind us of who we are, what we’re like, and how much we have fallen.
But at the same time, as we are reminded on how much we need a Saviour, we are also reminded that we get one. Jesus’ lament toward Jerusalem today isn’t him washing his hands of them. Jesus calling out sin isn’t about casting anyone out. Jesus isn’t writing any of us off, no matter how much we might deserve it.
Instead, Jesus is showing us the contrast of sin and grace, of feeling lost and being searched for and sought after, of our arrogance and the humility in realising that we have been saved by a benevolent and loving God.
See, Lent reminds us that it isn’t us who saves us, but it’s God. It’s not our actions or decisions that determine or place in God’s kingdom and family, but it’s by God’s gracious invitation and welcome. It’s not that we can’t do anything wrong, but it’s God’s promise and covenant to us that God instigates and fulfills that brings us into God’s eternal and unending love.
So as we continue through this season of Lent, let us keep looking at ourselves and how we might be missing the mark, not to guilt or shame us as undeserving, but to remind us of just how great and welcoming God’s grace for us all truly is. May we be granted the humility to see our sin, the faith to believe that God can and does forgive us, and the compassion for ourselves to accept it as truth. Thanks be to God. Amen.