Hi everyone,
Happy New (Church) Year! Welcome to the worship service for this 1st Sunday of Advent, landing on November 30, 2025!
The bulletin for this service can be found here. You can use it to follow along with the service as it has the order and words for worship as well as the full sermon manuscript. Alternatively, you can follow along with just the words that will appear on your screen, and with the words of sermon that is included on this page below the video.
If you’d like to enhance your online worship experience, you are invited to have a candle in your space, lit for the majority of the service and extinguished near the end after the sending hymn. You are also welcome to participate in communion if you are comfortable by having something small to eat and drink ready for the appropriate time. Further instruction will be given then.
May God’s unending love fill you with hope and purpose, this day and always!
Let your Word, O God, ring from the mountains and your Spirit shine forth in the earth, that we might hear you, see you, and feel you in and around our lives, through Jesus Christ our Saviour and our hope. Amen.
So, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Not just here at the church, but in the malls, on the streets, even at our home we started slowly but surely putting up the decorations that I have nothing to do with. Or else. And not to mention, as with every Christmas season, and as you might have guessed with how I started this sermon, songs by Bing Crosby are already starting to ring our ears, and if they weren’t before, I’m pretty sure they are now.
But let’s test that theory, shall we? We’ll play a little game that I’ll call… uh… “game”. I’ll start off a Bing Crosby song and you see if you can get the next word or line.
First up: “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas. Just like…”
Next one: “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Jack Frost…”
Last one (because we have to get on with this sermon): “I’ll be home for Christmas. You can…”
Yeah so this week I learned that it’s actually plan on me. Am I the only one who thought it was always “count on me”?
It was so weird for me when the radio was talking about it, how pretty much everyone thought this famous lyric was “count on me”, so much so that some professional covers of the song do even say “count” and not “plan”. And even though the radio insisted that the original is “plan” and not “count”, the first thing I did was pull out my trusty Bing Crosby Christmas vinyl LP 8-track cassette CD (ok I just streamed it from my phone), but I needed to hear the actual song, just to make sure. And yup, it’s “plan” alright.
And I tell ya, my mind was blown. I went as far as to ask others if they thought the same as me. I even asked my kids who were like, “What’s a Bing Crosby?” But even when they don’t know the guy, they knew the song well enough to still think that the missing word was “count.” Well, except for one of them who thought the next word was “Christmas.” Yup, “you can Christmas on me.” Anyway, it wasn’t just 2 out of 3 of my kids, but pretty much everyone else I asked, like all 5 of them, thought it was count. *sigh* Seriously, I don’t know if I can do this anymore, guys.
I mean, how could we as a society have been so wrong? How could our collective memory, or at least among those I asked about this, fail us so badly? How could I be so mistaken?
And yes, it’s just a song. Getting the lyric right or wrong is pretty inconsequential unless you were lip syncing it on Saturday Night Live or something. But in the long run, it just doesn’t matter. It makes no difference. Life continues and carries on.
But be that as it may, why does it still bother us so much? Or at least, it bugs me enough that I’m talking about it at length in this sermon.
The thing is, and I’ve talked about this a lot in the past, we don’t like to be wrong. So much, in fact, that when we are trapped in the corner and are about to be proven as such, we often try to change the rules so we’d actually be right. We shift the goal posts so it’ll turn out that it’s not us who is wrong, but they are. Or maybe we gaslight them and insist that we’re not the problem, but it’s them.
And I’m not just talking about old Christmas tune lyrics, but in so many different areas of life. Like when we’re reprimanded at work, we make excuses. When we’re stopped by cop, we claim ignorance of the law. When we’re at it with our spouse, partner, or friend, we want to keep going and going until they’re the ones to concede and admit that not just that they’re wrong, but that we’re right. As usual.
But what does all this have to do with the 1st Sunday of Advent, you ask? Well the thing is, I’ve known people who do this when trying to make heads or tails of Jesus’ teachings, especially the kind that we get today. But these words are like two thousand years old, they have been debated over, translated and translated and often times sourced from other translations, and taken apart and put together again so many times that no one really knows what the original words are anymore.
But that doesn’t stop people from guessing. Ascertaining. Even insisting that they are the bearers of that truth.
Don’t get me wrong though, there’s nothing wrong with believing in something, of course not, that’s like the whole premise of my job. There’s nothing wrong with having an opinion even if it’s divisive or a hot take. And there is certainly nothing wrong with having faith.
The problem is when that faith leads to anything but hope. Often, especially in our religious climate now, faith has been leading to a sense of superiority, in that those who are “in the know” think that they are better, more educated, and deserving of our utmost respect. Faith has brought about a notion that those among the faithful have become the gatekeepers of truth and morality, giving them the right to put anyone who doesn’t agree with them down and maybe even label them as heathens, evil, and “on the wrong side of history.” And ironically, faith seems to have brought more division than unity, what with all the wars, denominations, and in fighting among churches, congregations, and communities.
This religion thing has become such a “who’s in” and “who’s out” kind of thing.
So what are we to do? What can we do? What is the lesson for this 1st Sunday of Advent, the first day of the church year, the Sunday in which we are to be inspired by hope?
Well, the thing is, Jesus, in not so many words, tells us that it just doesn’t matter.
I don’t mean our faith, opinions, or belief don’t matter, but what I mean is that I hear Jesus telling us that our thinking that we’re right but are more likely to be wrong doesn’t matter. That these divisions that we try to artificially impose on the other won’t lead to where we think they’ll lead. That the arguing, the fighting, the one-upping of each other on theology, doctrine, and practice are not, have never been, and will never be the point.
See too often religion has been used to take away rights instead of uplifting them. It’s been used to oppress instead of liberate. It’s been used to put others in their places of not good enough, not moral enough, not loved enough by God.
However, Jesus doesn’t do any of that. Rather, he continually tells us that we are loved. He tells us that we are saved. He tells us that he is with us, always.
And that is what matters. See Jesus didn’t give criteria for this promise. He didn’t send us a to-do list on how we can summon him and his salvation. He didn’t include an “as long as you…” clause. No, there are no conditions for God entering into the world through the Immanuel. There are no disqualifiers that would change who we are and whose we are. There is nothing, not in death or life, things present or things to come, or anything else in all of creation that will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
So whether we think the world will end a certain way or not. Whether we vote this way or that way. Whether we thought Bing Crosby said “count on me” or knew it was “plan on me” all along, God will love us, God will welcome us, and God will be with us, just as God has always been and God always will.
This is the hope of Christmas that we look forward to in Advent. This is the truth that drives our faith. This is why we can be who we are as beloved and forgiven, redeemed and saved, welcomed and included parts of the body of Christ. That even when things can be confusing, shocking, and disappointing, God’s love for us won’t change but rather we can lean into its strength and recognise how it strengthens us.
So go ahead, be wrong. Make mistakes. Sing different words and off key even, if that’s the best you can do. Just know that through it all, the point was never to be right or the most moral or the most knowledgeable in faith and theology, but the point was always to just be loved, to be welcomed, and to be part of this eternal community together living in peace, joy, and hope.
So as we start this season of Advent and the church year, may we trust in the hope of God with us through Jesus, inviting us, forgiving us, and loving us as God’s own people in the world. Thanks be to God. Amen.
