Hi everyone,

It’s good to be back from holidays! Welcome to worship for this 13th Sunday after Pentecost, landing on September 7, 2025!

The bulletin for this service can be found here. In it, you’ll find the order and words of worship as well as the full sermon manuscript. You can use it to follow along with the service, or use the words that appear on your screen. The sermon is also on this page under the video.

If you’d like an enhanced online worship experience, you are welcome to have a candle in your space, lit at the beginning of the service and extinguished near the end when the altar candles are extinguished. You are also welcome to participate in communion by having something small to eat and drink prepared for the appropriate time. Further instruction will be given then.

May God’s expansive love fill you with hope and joy, this day and always!

God of wisdom, through your Spirit, speak to us a Word of life, that the power of your righteous love be planted in us to lead us, guide us, and show us the way, through Jesus our Saviour and brother.  Amen.

So again, I want to welcome myself back from holidays.  While it was a busy time filled with a lot of cleaning, fixing, and cleaning up after the fixing, I was able to find time to somewhat unplug and have some rest.  We as a family were even able to get a few days up at Whistler which is something that we weren’t able to do for a couple of years. 

Ok, now that we’re all caught up, I want to tell you about something that happened the other day.  I guess my algorithm learned that not only were we in Whistler like I mentioned, but that we did a few of hikes while we were there.  Because over the past couple weeks I have been getting a lot of hiking videos.  I’m not complaining, mind you, as some of these videos were pretty cool.  It was just this one in particular that I couldn’t stop watching.  It was from somewhere in Alberta according to the description, and it showed this super steep side of a mountain that kind of resembled the wall of the Hoover Dam, like when James Bond or whoever it was ran down it.  Like, it was one of those rock faces where only those gravity defying mountain goats could prance around on it.  

But instead, what the video had was some guy just casually walking out on the edge of this mountain.  You can hear his partner who is recording say, “I’m recording this in case you die” and he responds, “ok, tell the kids I love them”.  And I kid you not, it looked like he could have had his hands in his pockets as he just strolled along that what looked like and almost completely vertical rock face.  Like, I’m sure it was a lot safer than it looked, but still I had a real visceral reaction just watching this random person walking on this random mountain trail in this random video.

I mean my hands started to get sweaty.  My knees felt weak and maybe my arms got heavy.  There was no vomit or anything though, but my goodness was I ever nervous for this guy.  And again, I’m sure it was totally safe by how casually he was walking, but that didn’t stop me from reacting.  Like, I kind of froze up and expected the worst.  I don’t even know this guy or where he was, but somehow I was locked in on this video.

And who knows?  It could have been AI generated for all I know and there was no actual guy or mountain, but still you might know the reaction that I’m talking about.  Sometimes just looking at a roller coaster or out the window of a tall building or down those glass floors that are so popular now, we could get a little dizzy, feel a bit off balance, and maybe forget about logic and reason. I mean, we’re safe where we are.  We’re in zero danger of falling from our vantage point.  We have nothing to worry about.  But we worry anyway.  We gather up what we know, like how heights can be scary, and internalise it and react to it, because that is our truth, that is how we operate, it’s just who we are.

I think we might have had this sort of reaction to today’s gospel reading.  Which, by the way, is a great text to come back from holidays to.  I mean it just doesn’t sound nice, does it?  Imagine this is your first time hearing it.  Imagine you’re new and wanting to learn more about the bible and this is the first thing you learn.  Imagine you’re curious about Jesus and what following him is all about, and this is what you get.  You’d react, right?

I mean, this text is all about sacrifice, hating our families, and even death.  It sounds like Jesus is asking for too much just to be a disciple.  It’s more than most regular people would want to pay.  He isn’t exactly selling this whole thing very well.

And maybe that’s why churches aren’t so popular anymore.  Maybe that’s why we have an increasing number of people leaving the faith, claiming “no church affiliation”, or consider themselves not religious (but maybe still spiritual).  Because on the surface, at least the surface of Jesus’ words here, following him isn’t attractive, it isn’t enticing, it certainly doesn’t seem worth it. 

Again, he’s asking us to hate our families, which granted, might not seem like a big deal today with dysfunctional families being more normal than not.  But in those days families were everything.  They were the source of your livelihood, how you found your place and contribution in the world, where your identity lay.  To hate that would be ludicrous. 

And then Jesus asks us to carry the cross, which again might not seem bad now as many of us at least own some cross-shaped jewelry even if we don’t wear them on a daily basis.  But in those days the cross was a symbol of shame, a means of humiliation, an instrument of suffering and a brutal death.  That wouldn’t be something that you’d want to be associated with.

Then to make matters worse, Jesus tells us to sell everything.  Everything?  While these days we promote a minimalist lifestyle and downsizing and reducing are trendy practices, willingly getting rid of everything is still pretty extreme. 

And so of course when we hear this, especially for the first time, we will react.  We might shrink away.  We might even freeze up in disbelief, wondering how Jesus could ever ask us to give up so much.

But that’s the thing, I don’t know if Jesus is asking us to give up what we think he’s asking us to give up.  I’m not sure if Jesus is wanting more from us than what we are willing to let go of.   Sure, the text says that to be disciples we need to give up our stuff, our families, and our very lives, but I think Jesus is asking us to see how those things are actually holding us back from seeing him, his truth, and who we are as God’s people.

So rather than just hating life, losing life, and not having anything that life has to offer, I think Jesus is encouraging us to look at what we hold on to, what we might put too much trust in, and what we might be mistakenly using to define us.  That could be our familial relationships, but it could also be our material wealth, our fiscal worth, or what toys we have in our arsenal.  It could be our traditions, our practices, and our customs.  It could be how we are told to see the world, each other, and even ourselves.

And Jesus is asking us to let all of that go.

Not to the point of meaninglessness or that our opinions, needs, and preferences don’t matter.  But to see how we aren’t defined by the things of this world, that our opinions and preferences don’t make us better or worse than those who are different from us, and that we aren’t any more or less loved by God because of them.

I mean, it seems like our world is inundated by this now, doesn’t it?  How we so quickly define each other, categorize people by these artificial labels, and pigeon-hole entire groups with our assumptions and preconceived notions of them.  And honestly, it’s tearing us apart. 

So I hear Jesus telling us today to let go.  Ease our grip.  Relax a little in how tightly we hold onto our opinions, our interpretations, our need to always be right.  And then maybe have our eyes opened to see the value and worth of the other.  To see the gift of diversity.  To see how each and every person, no matter how much we like or don’t like them, can be a beloved child of God just as much as we are.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t easy.  It takes a lot of eye-opening and humility.  It takes a lot of letting go and unlearning.  It takes a lot of sacrifice and discipline.  But I think that is actually the cross that Jesus is asking us carry.  That our closed and narrow-mindedness can be burned and taken away to make room for forgiveness, grace, and community, both for others and ourselves.

And then maybe, just maybe, we can more clearly see God in the world, leading us, guiding us, and joining us together to serve, support, and love. So as we continue through his season after Pentecost, may we be humbled by the glory of God that welcomes us into community where we can be loved, forgiven, and carry the cross of our salvation.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.