First Presbyterian Church, Waukon, Iowa

In Other Words

You see one every now and then, typically at a public event: A “land acknowledgement,” some sort of short, formal statement that recognizes Indigenous nations as the first stewards of the land on which we now all live. Land acknowledgement recognizes the enduring relationship that exists between Native peoples and their traditional territories.

In what is now the Hawkeye State, people have inhabited the land for thousands of years: the Dakota in the northwest, the Iowa along the Des Moines River, the Sauk and Mesquakie to the east, and the Potawatami in the southwest. Here in the northeast it was the Ho-Chunk – actual people with real names like Waukon, Decorah, and Winneshiek. To recognize their land, proponents claim, is your expression of gratitude and appreciation to those whose territories you now consider home – your way of honoring the indigenous, native people who have been living and working on the land from time immemorial.

Among those who support land acknowledgment, their hearts are in the right place, but problem is, “land acknowledgment” is shallow, performative, and literally has no substance or depth without meaningful action to accompany or back it up. Unless the actual Indigenous peoples you’re “acknowledging” read it, unless we actually return acreages to their original “owners,” land acknowledgment only makes non-Native people feel better about themselves.

One of the best ways to respectfully acknowledge someone, I believe, is to listen carefully to those stories that define him or her – tales and yarns that give shape and substance to the inner being of another, and to listen with genuine curiosity, without preconceived notion or derogatory judgment. Such open-minded listening is how enduring trust is fostered, how healthy relationships are nurtured, how compassion and empathy are fed and watered.

Take the story of Emma Big Bear: Born in Wisconsin, she claimed direct descendancy from the early 19^th century Ho-Chunk Chief Waukon Decorah. Ms. Big Bear refused to live on a reservation and instead spent much of her 99 years of earthly life along the Mississippi River, in Allamakee and Clayton counties near the sacred spaces of the prehistoric Effigy Mounds. Ms. Big Bear is remembered as the last full-blooded Native American to live in northeast Iowa by traditional tribal means in everyday life.

Local fishermen gave Emma carp for her soup, and she would skin muskrats and raccoons for hunters and trappers in exchange for the meat. To earn a living, Emma is best known as a basket-maker, bead-worker, and herb-gatherer. Emma often sat along the riverbank, making her baskets of black ash trees and natural dyes, and selling her wares by the Marquette bridge and in downtown McGregor. Being dirt-poor did not stop Emma Big Bear from helping out a needy neighbor, even if all she could afford to do was to share an empathetic look or a caring smile.

Like all of us, Ms. Big Bear had her bad days – moments when the image of her Creator within were hard to see. But such brokenness never completely overshadows the sanctity of human life.

The Holy Scriptures offer unique and authoritative witness to stories of God’s interaction with people across generations of many colors. So tonight, I share with you an English translation of the Christmas story as seen through Native lenses. Let it serve not only as holy reminder of God’s Good News in Jesus Christ, but also as sacred “acknowledgement” that God’s Spirit has been dwelling richly in many “lands” – and in humble hearts – from the very beginning. Listen for the Voice who began Creation; listen even if you don’t understand this cherished story of humble birth.

When the time drew close for Bitter Tears (Mary) to have her child, the government of the People of Iron (Romans) ordered that the people be numbered and put on government rolls. This happened during the time that Powerful Protector (Quirinius) was the governor of Bright Son (Syria). All the Tribal Members were required to travel to their own ancestral village to register.

He Gives Sons (Joseph) and Bitter Tears (Mary) set out on a long journey from Seed Planter Village (Nazareth) in Circle of Nations (Galilee), to House of Bread (Bethlehem) in the Land of Promise (Judea), the village of their ancestor, the great chief Much Loved One (David).

The journey took several long days and cold nights as they traveled over high hills and through dry desert. When they arrived, tired and weary, they entered the crowded village. The time for Bitter Tears (Mary) to have her child was upon her! But no place could be found in the lodging house, so He Gives Sons (Joseph) found a sheep cave where it was warm and dry. There she gave birth to her son. They wrapped him in a soft, warm blanket and laid him on a baby board. Then they placed him on a bed of straw in a feeding trough.

That night, in the fields nearby, shepherds were keeping watch over their sheep. Suddenly a great light from above was shining all around them. A spirit-messenger from Creator appeared to them. They shook with fear and trembled as the messenger said to them, “Do not fear! I bring you the good story that will be told to all nations. Today in the village of Much Loved One (David) an Honored Chief has been born who will set his people free. He is the Chosen One!”

The spirit-messenger continued, “This is how you will know him – you will find the child wrapped in a blanket and lying in a feeding trough.”

Suddenly, next to the messenger, a great number of spirit-warriors from the spirit-world above appeared giving thanks to Creator, saying, “All honor to the One Above Us All,” and let peace and good will follow all who walk upon the earth.”

When the messengers returned to the spirit-world above, the shepherds said to each other, “Let us go and see this great thing Creator has told us.” So they hurried to the village of Chief Much Loved One (David) and found Bitter Tears (Mary), He Gives Sons (Joseph), and the child, who, just as they were told, was lying in a feeding trough!

The shepherds began to tell everyone what they had seen and heard about this child, and all who heard their story were amazed.

Bitter Tears (Mary) kept these things hidden in her heart and wondered what all this would mean. The shepherds returned to their fields, giving thanks to the Great Spirit for the wonders they had seen and heard. (Luke 2:1-20)

The Word of the Lord, for all with ears to hear the Good News.

Thanks be to God, Creator of the greatest story ever told!

In grateful response, share an empathetic look or a caring smile – if that’s all you can afford to give. It’s the least you can do for those neighbors in need whom Jesus will grow to call “the least of these.”

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during candlelight worship on Christmas Eve 2024 at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. The Scripture lesson from Luke 2 arises from First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament. Learn more about Emma Big Bear through the non-profit foundation that bears her name.

What Did Mary Know, and When Did She Know It?

The song asks the honest question, “Mary, did you know?” What did you know, and when did you know it? For some, the lyrics rub the wrong way with the course feeling of mansplaining to Mary, “Hey, did you know your Son wasn’t just some random kid?” The very notion is a non-starter: That Mary was clueless about her Son’s identity and mission.

Mary knew what she heard from the angel Gabriel, “Do not be afraid, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” (Luke 1:30-33)

Mary knew what her distant relative Elizabeth had declared, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” (Luke 1:42-45)

Mary knew what the angel told her husband, “‘Joseph, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’” (Matthew 1:20-21)

Mary knew what shepherds heard from the heavenly host, “Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. You will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” The shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.”

So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. (Luke 2:10-18)

Mary knew what her elders Simeon and Anna said when Mary and Joseph presented their 8-day-old bundle of joy in the temple, even before the arrival of the Wise Men, even before Joseph’s dream to save Jesus from the murderous King Herod. “Simeon took the baby Jesus in his arms and praised God, saying, ‘Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.’” (Luke 2:28-32)

Mary knew. Twice the Holy Spirit overshadows her, and twice she treasures all that has happened, pondering such remarkable events in her heart. (Luke 2:19, 51). She thinks about everything long and deeply, with rich insight into what God was doing in and through her – little Mary, meek and mild.

Mary knew! Maybe not all the particulars about Jesus’s entire ministry, including his passion, death, and resurrection. She did know, however, via Simeon, that “a sword” one day would pierce her own heart and soul.

Mary probably didn’t have any special foreknowledge of miracles like Jesus walking on water and calming of the storm. But the Old Testament prophet Isaiah would have given Mary a clue about Jesus giving sight to the blind. Isaiah predicts what is yet to come: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Isaiah 61:1-3, Luke 4:18)

Mary thus knew that the sleeping child she was holding would usher in the kingdom of God.

The full humanity and divinity of Christ remains a mystery, and exactly how Mary understood or articulated that mystery is a question that Scripture doesn’t fully answer. Though Mary knew intimately who Jesus was. She carried him for nine months, and she alone knew beyond any possibility of doubt that there was no human father.

Mary’s “yes” to God was a moment of singular grace. Without her “yes,” there’d have been no incarnation – no God coming to us in human form and pitching his tent among us. Mary would not unwillingly become the mother of God, nor would Mary’s “yes” have been so blessedly meaningful had she not understood what she was agreeing to.

When she said “yes,” Mary knew what it meant: God had chosen her for deep, overwhelming privilege. Mary also knew – deep in her heart of hearts, I suspect – that she was consenting to unsupportable sorrow. God did not foist that on her either. When Simeon issued his warning, Mary undoubtedly heard nothing she didn’t already know.

Mary knew. And from the get-go, she knew it all – or at least the parts that mattered most to a broken and fearful world.

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on the Seventh Sunday of Advent, December 22, 2024, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. Reflection by Steven D. Greydanus informs the message. Illustrations are by Phil Boatright and come from the children’s book Mary Did You Know? The Story of God’s Great Plan by Mark Lowry.

How Many Licks?

At a place called Marah, the Old Testament prophet Moses – at God’s command – tosses a mere stick into a pool of water too bitter to drink. That cane of wood no sooner splashes the surface when the waters turn sweet: Like the sultry spe-chew of a cold one popped open on a hot summer night, a taste of “heaven to earth come down … all Thy faithful mercies crown!

Thus pours from a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night –

“If you will listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God, and do what is right in his sight, and give heed to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will not allow to befall on you the diseases that befell the Egyptians. For I am the LORD who heals you.” (Exodus 16:26)

As heaven is always want to do, the Lord provides for the Israelites even though they rebel against him. Upon reaching Elim, God’s people discover by experience that, even in the desert wilderness, the Lord indeed will care for them. They see in that piece of wood tossed the abundant, merciful care of God!

Farther down the long way of discipleship, next generations now see in that piece of wood tossed the same contours in the sharp, bloody form of Calvary’s Christmas Tree, the Cross of Christ – soaked in all the Marah-tasting bitterness of our sin. Mmmmm, how sweet it is, “Trust and obey.”

Obedience – toeing the line that God draws – ain’t for the faint of heart. Listening to the Word that God has spoken is oftentimes painful; so also the voice of the one who is close at hand: Like the voice of your mother barking, “Hands off, don’t touch,” when her holiday time came for homemade Christmas cookies and candy.

Yet on the kitchen counter there it lie. Slab upon slab of raw chocolate stacked what seemed to a little boy a mile high. Mmmmm, how sweet it is, “Yum! Cann-deee!!” And therein lay the problem: I’d not-yet learned the life lesson of reading the fine print. The chocolate I spied was meant for baking. As every good cook knows, there’s a remarkable difference in taste between semi-sweet baking chocolate and endlessly tasty sweet chocolate. And a well-placed shirtsleeve to the tongue wipes away the taste.

Ack! But at age 8, who knew?

So also in maturity: Sin often looks so sweet, brokenness so often tastes delicious. Yet it’s all baking chocolate; bitterness in disguise.

So also in maturity: Obedience to “hands off, don’t touch” builds healthy habits, like –
living off a little less, so others might live off a little more;
abiding in the day’s joys, that feeling of lightness in your chest;
maintaining a competitive spirit while realizing when it’s time to work for the common good.

Obedience builds healthy habits like forgiveness, never-more-gorging on the ever-more-just dessert of our enemies, instead practicing gratitude and embodying grace: Better to give than receive, and all that jazz. The sweet life made full in the radical choices of obedience.

God’s law is right. Perfect. Period. Over all Creation! Choking down the horse pills of the Lord’s seemingly harsh bitterness – forgiveness, sacrifice, common good – are really just disguised sweetness. It’s God’s way to the sweet center.

In my wonder years, the question posed, “How many licks does it take to get to the [sweet] center of a Tootsie Pop?” Somewhere between 253 and 412, depending on the lore of supposed study. Perhaps perform your own research with your littles over the holidays. Stuff some Tootsie-Pops in their stockings hung by the chimney with care. Make them lick-count their way to the sweet Tootsie Roll center. It’ll keep ’em occupied for a good 10 minutes!

Better yet, join Mary Mother of Jesus in treasuring sweet words, pondering them in your heart; glorifying and praising God for sweet goodness tasted and seen, broken and poured; singing Gloria in excelsis Deo in thought, word, and action.

At age 8 or 88, who knew? I know Mary knew! All because Moses threw a stick, and a Savior was fetched.

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on the Sixth Sunday of Advent, December 16, 2024, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Lora A. Copley and Chelsey Harmon inform the message, which is part of of Pastor Grant’s Advent series, “Words from the Beginning: Advent Reminders for New Seasons.”

To the Lord Who Heals, an Advent prayer

Along the long, hard slog from slavery in Egypt to freedom through the parted waters of the Red Sea, God provides for the Israelites despite their rebellious nature. That’s precisely what God promises to do. That’s the biblical style of covenant-making: Agreements made by two parties. In the Old Testament book of Exodus, the Lord lays out his part:

“If you will listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God, and do what is right in his sight, and give heed to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians; for I am the LORD who heals you.” (Exodus 15:26)

But there’s no answer from the Israelites – no their part of the deal.

Perhaps we can read their silence as part of their wondering about this really powerful God whom they are just starting to really get to know. Thinking in terms of God as the Great Physician, the Israelites are still early enough in their relationship with the Lord that they can switch to another health care provider – or even return to the ones they just left behind in Egypt, which we know they ask, even try, to do more than once.

Stories about the Lord putting people to the test, as he does here, make a lot of us squirm. Maybe the bitter pill of testing is easier swallowed if we think of purposeful tempting as opportunities to prove where one really stands: Better yet, as the physical therapist who gives you a test of strength to see how you’re recovering.

When he tests his people, the Lord always provides what’s needed, so that the awful thing the people think they may have to do doesn’t actually come to fruition. In other words, the testing is done in a safe environment with our healer right on hand to rescue us if things fly the rails.

In Exodus God’s test is the people’s obedience of God’s promise to heal them. The Israelites fail the test, just as we continue to fail similar exams. Yet, God’s healing is never taken from us. God continues to be the one who heals, even healing us from our failures to keep his commands, to see the world as he does, and to listen closely for and to his voice. In the end, thanks be to God, grace trumps our sinfulness.

Keep in mind the order of events: God saves us, then paints a picture of how God wants us to live. Law-keeping isn’t about redemption but about grateful living, about experiencing the full blessings and presence of God. Through Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit, this sequence becomes abundantly more clear: God heals; we respond with gratitude, offering our whole lives in worship and service to him by following his prescription for holy living. Jesus and the Holy Spirit continue the work of God in providing healing and restoration.

“I am the Lord who heals you. I am your healer. I am your doctor!” God makes a sweeping promise to heal and restore body, soul, and mind – part and parcel of a cycle of learning to trust in God’s provision in the wilderness times and places of our lives. God declares heaven’s always-good purposes of healing, working unto good amid the consequences of the people’s sinfulness, both now and forever.

Now, turn to God in prayer, standing beside the generous waters of Elim, where the Lord proves himself faithful and trustworthy, and provides his people with yet another lived experience of healing they can remember, upon which to build their faith. Lift up, now, aloud or in silence, those people and places in need of prayer. Then let our hearts gather in prayer beside sweet waters –

Dear Lord God of Marah and Elim,

You are the Great Physician and share your prescription for healthy living through the example of your Son, Jesus. As our family doctors tell us to eat healthy and exercise regularly, so, too, does your Spirit help keep us close so we can hear your voice, see the world as you see it, and live as you expect us to live.

Help us hear your candid response to our fervent prayer: If you live contrary to Christ, if you continue to shun our Spirit, there will be suffering – pain and heartache that easily could have been prevented had we just obeyed your Word. Forgive us for being so stiff-necked to Creation’s sour reality: Bitterness and rebellion against you never end well.

So we trust in your promise to heal – to meet the immediate needs of a thirsty people. Thank you for the foretaste of finally realized healing as your people experienced at Elim. Thank you for the health you continue to provide, even though we do not realize it is happening: The healing of souls saved from slavery to the Law, the experience of true rest and refreshment, the reality of having what we truly need to thrive, the humility to admit that we truly do not know the fullness of your goodness.

Remind us that healing from our wounds, visible and invisible, takes time. Like the trauma surgeon who moves on to treat other patients and passes responsibility for rehab to another professional, your Son and Spirit will continue your redemption through and through. You have already shown yourself as the pillar of fire by night and cloud by day. And through it all, the doctor is in!

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace; goodwill toward all. Amen.

Bitter-Sweet

Complaining, grumbling, and doubting are among the human emotions fueling the plot of our Advent Scripture lessons from the Old Testament book of Exodus, the epic story of the Lord God freeing his people from slavery in Egypt. Their journey to freedom through the Red Sea has been grueling, demanding, and exhausting, and folks are understandably cranky, testy, and irritable. And thirsty!

As we rejoin the crowd this morning, the Israelites have gone three days without water, and God’s people are getting desperate. When they finally spy water, you can well imagine a collective sigh of relief rising from dry tongues and parched throats – and a beeline of whiny, road-weary kids running toward the water with whoops of excitement. But a first taste leaves them gagging, sputtering, wiping their tongues on their sleeves. The water is bitter, brackish, diseased!

The people turn to God in fuming protest: “You betrayed us.” They open wide their mouths in complaint, and the boiling acidity of Marah spews out. In Hebrew, the word Marah means both bitter and rebellious. And unchecked “Marah” calcifies the heart and stiffens the neck. But the Lord always wills life for his people and thus shows Moses a tree. Listen to the Word that God has spoken –

[After Moses and Miriam led the people in singing praise to God for delivering them from slavery,] Moses ordered Israel to set out from the Red Sea into the wilderness of Shur. They went three days in the wilderness and found no water.

When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water, because it was bitter. That is why it was called Marah. And the people [again] complained against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” Moses cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a piece of wood. Moses threw it into the water, and the water became sweet. There the LORD made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he put them to the test. God said,

Then they came to Elim, where there were 12 springs of water and 70 palm trees, and they camped there by the water. (Exodus 15:22-27)

It surely would have been more efficient had God led the Israelites to bypass the bitterness of Marah and proceed straight to Elim. But remember God’s intent in sending the people out to the desert in the first place. The Lord wants a spouse, a partner who will trust him and love him. But Israel is full of rebel Egypt – still enamored with the idols their ancestors worshiped when they lived on the other side of the Red Sea, in slavery to a sin-sick Pharoah. (Joshua 24:14, Numbers 11:4-5, Exodus 16:3). God’s people need healing of their Egyptian mindset and instinctive distrust.

So this isn’t just a straightforward biblical miracle of water’s provision. It points to a bitter reality beyond itself: Your hearts and minds, souls and spirits, desperately need therapy and treatment, and “I am the Lord who heals you.” God’s chosen instrument of restoration is – of all things – a stick of wood.

The earliest writings of the church fathers unpack the mystery.

They see this “piece of wood” in Israel’s story bearing all the contours of another “piece of wood” in Jesus’s story – outlines of bitterness and sweetness, silhouettes of bane and blessing. They behold the sharp, bloody form of Calvary’s tree, the Cross of Christ – soaked in all the Marah-tasting bitterness of our sin.

The night before, there in Gethsemane’s garden, Jesus is bestowed with a bitter cup reeking of horseradish, a cup foaming with the wrath of God against our rebellious hearts and selfish ways. Again and again, Jesus asks that the cup pass him by. But in the end, Jesus obeys God – choking down the first sip of Gethsemane and draining it to the dregs on the Cross. Jesus becomes dis-eased with all the diseases we deserve for not keeping God’s commandments, and we tasted the sweetness of life that was his.

It is only the Cross, ultimately, that heals both our rebel hearts and bitter experiences. Its grace heals in the here-and-now and in the hereafter. The Lord’s commandments drive us to the Cross – the only true and faithful motive for obedience to God’s Law. Our law is now to find sweet life by taking up our cross daily, as we die to self and rise healed and whole with Christ on Easter morning. The prophet Isaiah “twas foretold it”: “He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5 NRS)

As the Holy Spirit again invites us along an Advent journey toward Bethlehem, let us not respond with bitter mouths and sour hearts when Marah waters flood life’s landscape. Rather let us trust in the One who drank undiluted bitterness and took its punishment, so that we would be healed. Then, even at Marah itself, we can still resolve to sing –

This Flow’r, whose fragrance tender with sweetness fills the air,
Dispels with glorious splendor the darkness everywhere.
True man, yet very God, from sin and death he saves us,
And lightens every load.

So also we sing with the saints the mystery of God’s power, without questioning God’s goodness: “The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower.”

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on the Fifth Sunday of Advent, December 8, 2024, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Lora A. Copley and Chelsey Harmon inform the message.

Connecting the Dots

The feelings and emotions that change stirs in your heart and mind are expected and understandable. You’re sad, anxious; disappointed, angry. Change challenges truths and understandings once regarded as absolute and unquestionable. Long-held assumptions start to feel flimsy and paper-thin. Time-honored bedrock suddenly feels like all-enveloping quicksand. Like it or not – mostly not, you’ve been swept up in viral events beyond your control. And no one is quite sure what to make of the disruption to plans and routines, to attitudes and mindsets.

As I suggested to you last Sunday, sometimes we enjoy novelty, a change of pace, something different. And in those moments we find reasons for joy and celebration amid the warm glow of it all. But when it comes to our thinking, we prefer consistent, predictable belief, and tend not to entertain easily other perspectives. Yet when the mind is flexibly open, you hold fast certain beliefs while remaining open to new information.

Dealing with disruption and confusion – and processing it all with an open heart and mind – is the frustrating, uncomfortable place where Mary finds herself in our Advent Scripture lessons from the Gospel of Luke. An angel delivered the surprising news that, like her much-older cousin Elizabeth, the unwed, teen-age Mary will bear a child who will come of age as Son of the Most High.

With equal measures of solid faith and sure trepidation, Mary accepts the challenging role that God has called her to play in the drama of salvation. Her heart and mind are open to new possibilities while holding fast to steadfast belief in the goodness and mercy of God. But the puzzle of what the Lord has in mind for her and her son is still missing a few pieces. So, Mary packs her bag and sets off to spend some time with Elizabeth in hopes of making faithful sense of it all. And what Mary discovers on her extended visit is breathtaking: God has called her to tend and nurture the divine dreams that God has woven into her.

Listen, now, for the Word that God has spoken, midway through the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel, as the evangelist continues setting the stage for the birth of Jesus. And Mary said,

In the Christian tradition, Mary’s song of praise is known as The Magnificat – Latin for “magnifies,” echoing the lilting start of Mary’s lyric hymn, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” By all indications, the recent cosmic events into which Mary has been swept have taught her a thing or two about God and about what God has in mind for her and the world around her.

Mary is painfully aware of her lowly social status in her time and culture. As a woman, she is a piece of property as much as anything, belonging first to a father who saw her as something less valuable than a son, and then later to a husband who could divorce her at will for good reason or no reason whatsoever – an act that she herself could never initiate, no matter how unfaithfully terribly her husband treated her.

Even worse for her place in the pecking order of her day, the bucolic Mary isn’t a member of a big-city, A-list family nor does she enjoy any prospects for making her mark on the world or ever being remembered for anything special beyond a generation or two – if even that!

Yet, miraculously and startlingly, God visits her with news so stunning, so jaw-dropping, that it’ll take at least the rest of her mortal days to sort it all out and make sense of it all. For now, though, that reversal of circumstances, that lifting up of the lowly, that exaltation of the humble, tells Mary that this is precisely how God works.

Maybe the Holy Spirit re-opens Mary’s heart and mind to the Old Testament stories she heard as a youngster:

Time-honored tales like God selecting the aging Abram and Sarai to begin a covenant of great blessing with their family and generations to come. Perhaps Mary recalls well-spun yarns about God choosing the younger, less-favored Jacob over his more highly regarded older brother Esau. Mary might see herself in head-scratching parables about God making holy use of a stuttering Moses, a vulnerable Ruth, and a baby of the scandalous family of David. Mary surely finds joy-filled assurance in God’s choice to favor the feckless Israelites with their fickle faith over the impressive Egyptians with their towering pyramids and mighty Pharoah.

It’s not so far-fetched to suggest that Mary remembers and takes her cues from the Israelite women who came long before her and whose Exodus story we’ve also been following this Advent. With the Lord’s help, God’s people have escaped the determined hunt of a ferocious, Egyptian army and reached safety of the eastern shore of the Red Sea, where Moses lifts his song of praise – singing praise to the Lord for his glorious triumph of tossing Egyptian horses and riders into the sea, and declaring the strength and might of this God of salvation. The Israelite praise then continues with singing and dancing:

The prophet Miriam, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing. And Miriam sang to them: “Sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.” (Exodus 15:20-21)

Perchance Mary remembers all these things: Miriam’s song of thanksgiving, the generational legacy of Abraham and Sarah, and all those other surprising-yet-assuring Old Testament stories. And in her remembrance, Mary connects all those dots with a bold, black line that leads straight to the child growing in her womb – a child so important that even her older cousin Elizabeth refers to him as “my Lord.” Mary – little Mary, meek and mild, is bearing the Savior of the nations!

And as she ponders and treasures everything that’s happened, as she eagerly anticipates and foretells everything that’s yet to come, Mary connects a few more dots to see that those who for now in this world fancy themselves as captains of industry and masters of the universe – those with enough money to force others to kowtow to their every whim in one spectacle after another of sheer self-aggrandizement – these supposedly wealthy and powerful folks, Mary now knows, will be on the losing side of salvation history if, at the end of the cosmic day, their worldly treasure and power are their only comforts in life and in death.

The rich and famous appear to have gained the whole world, Mary might have speculated in anticipation of biting words that her own son will one day speak (Matthew 16:26). But if along the way they forfeit their own souls, the high and mighty will be knocked down a peg or two and sent packing, empty as a pocket and hopeless as it gets. “What happens to me,” Mary as much as sings in her sudden song, “is a sign of what one day will happen to all Creation.”

Mary gets it in no uncertain terms, and Mary sees it with crystal clarity: God unconditionally loves the poor, graciously favors the disenfranchised, easily spots those whom society makes invisible and totally ignores. And under the kingdom reign of that same God’s Son, all the wrongs that produce the perpetually poor and perennially marginalized will be righted. All the wrinkles of injustice with which people now suffer will be ironed out in a righteousness that landscapes the whole earth. Mary sees it clear as day, and her heart swells with joy!

It’s easy to be joyless in this world. It’s simple and almost effortless.

You can put others down. You can dwell in hopelessness. You can even hop on social media and lob out lies and negativity from the comfort of your own home. Even better, when you lack joy, you don’t have to do a blessed thing constructive or otherwise. You can just languish in your misery and joylessness. It’s a whole lot harder to rejoice, because joy is hard. That sounds like a contradiction in terms. After all, joy is joy, and joy should be easy, right?

No, not really. Because real joy is something much deeper.

Joy is something that takes root, and joy is something that remains deeply rooted – even when the winds are howling and laying waste to everything else around you. Joy is resistance against the powers of sin and evil, and that’s particularly true on the worst of days. All too often we think of joy as a big, bodacious emotion. But joy, like a seed, starts small, and small acts cultivate joy in ourselves that spreads to others.

Mary’s Magnificat – the magnified rejoicing of God in Mary’s soul – recalls the cultivation of an ancestral promise, and Mary bears witness – in and with her very body – to a God of promise who always makes good on his Word. With the help and direction of the Holy Spirit, we are called to proclaim those same faithful promises of a faithful God to this world and its people, as the Lord writes new chapters in the story of his joyful promises in and through you and me for the hope and healing of a broken and fearful world.

That means you and I must sally forth into the world – in joy – and act upon the joy-filled dreams that God holds for the future of all Creation.

As we take those courageous steps into unknown territories, more of our friends and neighbors come to believe that the way things are now – from hardship and oppression, to fear to brokenness –definitely are not the ways that things are going to remain if God has anything to say about it. And God surely does!

Perhaps we’ll look back on all the disruption and change our times have wrought upon our lives and see how those interruptions and disappointments actually afforded us the time and space to spy opportunities for joining Mary in magnifying the glory, grace and goodness of God in thought, word and deed. Maybe fervent prayer also demands the stillness of quiet listening for answers, even if we don’t understand – or simply don’t want to understand.

After all, it’s OK to mess with tradition if, in the end, the change somehow or other reveals the heavenly dreams of resurrection and reconciliation that God has woven into our hearts.

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 1, 2024, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Wilda Gafney, Lisle Gwinn Garrity, Emily C. Heath, B. Janet Hibbs, Scott Hoezee, and Anthony Rostain inform the message. Previous sermons in this Advent series are available at FirstPresWaukon.com/sermons/. The video of women reciting The Magnificat is by Christian Aid. For more than 70 years, the non-profit organization has been standing with the poorest of our neighbors, working in 37 countries with people of all faiths and none for dignity, equality and justice.

Sing Along with Moses

When your mind’s made up, you don’t often change it, because, well, change is hard. Our history as individuals and communities proves the point. Yet look back even a mere handful of decades in our lived experience to discover that certain beliefs are changeable and attitudes do change: Many for the better, others not so much.

Change is fed and watered, for good and for bad, because truths once regarded as absolute and unquestionable are challenged with motives and agendas both benevolent and malevolent. Those truths we hold self-evident rest on foundations of shared reality and common experience, held fast with assumptions borne of collective certainty and mutual familiarity.

Problem is, as we’re learning the hard way, reality and experience – certainty and familiarity – run far afield. Your reality and experience differ from mine. To the table of community each brings a variety of gifts intended to serve common good.

You grew up on a farm within sight of Lansing Ridge; I came of age as a city kid with quick access to shopping malls. My parents were Eisenhower Republicans; yours were Kennedy Democrats. After high school, you joined the family business, or learned a trade, or served in the military; I went off college and became a journalist. Then to seminary and parish ministry. One is not necessarily better, or more blessed, or more important than the other; they’re simply unique experiences that create different understandings and perspectives.

So also divergent, then, are those beliefs that feel certain and familiar, and everyone’s mind is made up. And it’s darn-near impossible to discuss or even consider opposing beliefs when too many minds are closed.

When your mind is closed – full of beliefs, convictions, thoughts, and ideas carved in stone, that mindset informs your understanding of others and shapes all your relationships. Sometimes we enjoy novelty, a change of pace, something different. But when it comes to our thinking, we prefer consistent, predictable belief, and tend not to entertain easily other perspectives. Human nature tends to favor a daily existence that’s contentedly stuck in the mud of the familiar, perhaps even comfortably numb to the plights of another.

A closed mind does have an upside. A closed mind, if nothing else, is efficient. You quickly arrive at one answer or readily adopt a particular belief. But the downside to such mental efficiency is a learning trap that abruptly halts the exploration we need for creative problem-solving. Simply put, a closed mind stops considering other possibilities or exploring better solutions. Closed mindsets are vulnerable to distortions that reduce reality to black-and-white, all-or-none thinking. And clinging to unevaluated, rigidly held beliefs often morphs into a self-defeating death grip on gridlock.

But when the mind is flexibly open, you hold fast certain beliefs while remining open to new information.

An open mindset of curiosity incorporates beliefs that are adaptable to evaluate new or complicated material. Evaluating your thinking promotes creative exploration of ideas and solutions. As the renowned physicist Albert Einstein maintained, no problem can be solved with the same level of consciousness and understanding that created it.

My quick primer in social psychology is a helpful lens for viewing this morning’s scene in the Old Testament story of the exodus, the epic tale of God’s people freeing slavery in Egypt through parted seas: A baptism, of sorts, as much by fire as by water.

When they first arrive on the west shore of the Red Sea, the minds of God’s people are closed. Caught between the devil of Pharoah’s army and the chaos of the deep blue sea, God’s people are cranky, irritable; frightened, hopeless; closed to the notion that God is still leading the way, as he promised, by heavenly pillars of cloud and fire.

But by the time this motley crew reaches the safety of the eastern shore, the Holy Spirit opens minds once closed to the reality and experience that God really and truly remained at, with, and on their side. Minds change about the Lord God Almighty who – ruled by motivations of peace, freedom, justice, truth, and love – most definitely and absolutely is doing a new thing, drying every tear and making all things new. (Revelation 21:4-5)

The Israelites have changed their mindset about God. They now see the relationship between God and God’s people in an entirely new light. Their past, present, and future suddenly look radically different and potentially quite fruitful. And the Israelites celebrate God’s Good News with thanksgiving: Lifting high resounding praise, for grace and joy abounding.

Listen to the Word that God has spoken; listen to the One who is close at hand.
Listen to the Voice who began Creation; listen even if you don’t understand.

Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the LORD:

“I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea. The LORD is my strength and my might, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him. The LORD is a warrior; the LORD is his name.

“Pharaoh’s chariots and his army he cast into the sea; his picked officers were sunk in the Red Sea. The floods covered them; they went down into the depths like a stone. Your right hand, O LORD, glorious in power – your right hand, O LORD, shattered the enemy. In the greatness of your majesty, you overthrew your adversaries; you sent out your fury, it consumed them like stubble. At the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up, the floods stood up in a heap; the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea. The enemy said, ‘I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil, my desire shall have its fill of them. I will draw my sword; my hand shall destroy them.’ You blew with your wind; the sea covered them; they sank like lead in the mighty waters.

“Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendor, doing wonders? You stretched out your right hand, the earth swallowed them. In your steadfast love you led the people whom you redeemed; you guided them by your strength to your holy abode.” (Exodus 15:1-13)

When it comes to God’s grace, when you’re an unworthy recipient of God’s peace, freedom, justice, truth, and love, the only faithful response is gratitude. You sing songs of thanksgiving for God’s glorious triumph:

“The LORD is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation. The LORD is my God, and I will praise him. My LORD is the God of my ancestors, and I will exalt him.” (Exodus 15:2)

Singing such songs of prayerful gratitude are always good and faithful acts of praise and exaltation – even when the calendar doesn’t proclaim a season of “thanksgiving.” Yet, just as talk is cheap, and actions speak louder than words, so also do lyrics ring hallow when grateful words fail to inspire thankful behaviors.

When pondering in your heart what thankful, Spirit-led behavior means for you, think in terms of the time-honored question of moral imperative, “What would Jesus do?” – WWJD abbreviated on those wristbands buried somewhere in the back of our dresser drawers. When faced with decisions about how to behave, WWJD? What would Jesus do? Does your chosen word or intended deed sound or look like something Jesus would say or do?

Does word or deed sound or look Jesus-y?

Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, teaching the ignorant; welcoming the stranger, feasting at table, nursing the sick. Including and inviting; crying and mourning; praying and resting. Healing, forgiving, and reconciling.

“God has told you, O mortal, what is good,” declares the Old Testament prophet Micah. “What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)

WWJD? Jesus-y! Thankful behaviors that give integrity to thankful words:

“Your right hand, O LORD, glorious in power – your right hand, O LORD, shattered the enemy. In the greatness of your majesty, you overthrew your adversaries; you sent out your fury; it consumed them like stubble.” (Exodus 15:6-7)

The apostle Paul, of course, sweetly measures thankful behavior. “Fruit of the Spirit,” he cultivates for the Galatians: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. “Against such things there is no law,” Paul judges rightly. (Galatians 5:22-23)

WWJD? Jesus-y! Thankful behaviors that give integrity to thankful words:

“Who is like you, O LORD? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendor, doing wonders? You stretched out your right hand, the earth swallowed the enemy.” (Exodus 15:11-12)

Jesus himself directs thankful behavior in commandments he calls the greatest: Loving and serving the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; loving and serving your neighbor as you yourself want to be loved. “On these two commandments,” Jesus declares, “hinge all the law and the prophets.” (Deuteronomy 6:5, Matthew 22:37-40)

WWJD? Jesus-y! Thankful behaviors that give integrity to thankful words:

“In your steadfast love you led the people whom you redeemed; you guided them by your strength to your holy abode.” (Exodus 15:13)

Friends, we all are deeply invested in heartfelt, long-held beliefs about God, about one another, about the ways in which God is working unto good among us. And questioning even one of those beliefs feels especially and particularly threatening, because the vulnerability of loss always precedes the elegance of gain. Closed systems of thinking or organizing experiences need opening, and resets to what we think and believe initially will disorient and distress.

But that, I believe, is why God in Christ Jesus chooses to pitch his tent among us in the first place, bearing the fullness of grace upon grace in human flesh that confronts and challenges the brokenness of what is, opening a more life-affirming way forward through waters of chaos, rescuing all souls caught between the devil and the deep, blue sea. (John 1:14, 16)

“Why does the mother of our Lord come to me?” Elizabeth wonders aloud to Mary. You and I ponder with similar candor, “Why does our Lord come to us?” And the response is likewise: The fulfillment of what was spoken by the Lord. Redemption, reconciliation, and reunion really are possible – and best re-kindled with changes of heart and mind all around the holiday table.

WWJD?! Jesus-y! Happy Thanksgiving!

In grateful response to grace, may closed minds be opened. In grateful response to grace, may open minds hold fast to integrity with the Gospel. Listen to the Word that God has spoken, to people looking east, for the dawn of a brighter day.

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on the Third Sunday of Advent, November 24, 2024, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. Scholarship by B. Janet Hibbs and Anthony Rostain inform the message.

Wet Feet

Advent is a season of new beginnings, and Scripture is inviting us to see ourselves in two particular biblical stories of new beginnings – both tales briming with hopeful expectation and debilitating fear.

In last Sunday’s opening scene of Luke’s Gospel, an angel surprises a faithful priest, Zechariah, with word that he and his wife, Elizabeth, will at long last be blessed with a child who’ll come of age as John the Baptist.

As we learned earlier in the service, Luke’s scene two follows the same scenario: An angel shocks one of Elizabeth’s distant relatives, a teen-ager named Mary, with perplexing pronouncement that she will conceive and bear a royal son, Jesus, of whose Kingdom there will be no end.

“Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you,” the angel assures. “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.” (Luke 1:28, 30) The Word of the Lord! Meanwhile, from the Old Testament comes the next installment from the story of the exodus, the epic tale of God’s people fleeing slavery to Egypt’s Pharoah.

When we left them last Sunday, a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night had led the Israelites to the edge of the Red Sea. Ahead lay a perilous crossing between parted waters, and moving forward in faith will bring hazards more than physical. So also are the dangers of taking that first step both spiritual and emotional, both heartfelt and gut-wrenching.

Because God’s people are walking on eggshells through precipitous change; they are slogging toward a “new normal,” if you will, and differing expectations for that new normal are making for prickly relationships. And here’s the secret hidden in plain sight: “Normal” is difficult to define, and chasing normal does precious little to help one move forward.

“Normal,” it seems, is a continuum, and sometimes it’s OK not to be OK.

To wrap your head around a new normal, one first must evaluate, understand, and then possibly change one’s thinking. The size and scope of life’s disruptions – economic, social, and political – profoundly influence our thinking about what’s what and challenge our preconceived notions and expectations about what should or shouldn’t happen.

Rather than affirm expectations, rapid, profound change instead shatters expectations – at least among a plurality of souls, anyway. And that’s more than a little distressing and problematic. Because when our brains sense heightened physical distress, our bodies trigger fight-or-flight rushes of adrenaline, which in turn create a long, sustained release of the stress hormone cortisol. High levels of cortisol are linked to stress, and worrisome stress often pops a slow leak in one’s resilience.

Don’t fault yourself. It’s a confounding time, because so much of what affects all our lives is beyond our control. What we can control is our response to unfolding events and uncertainties and how we relate to each other. Perhaps so also this is a great time to ask ourselves deep questions of faith, belief, and their daily practice: Holding out the possibility, as with the Israelites, that, while you might not be totally “wrong,” neither let no-longer-valid expectations trick you into believing you’re entirely “right.”

The 20th century psychologist Kurt Lewin polishes a helpful lens for viewing the story of the exodus: “If you truly want to understand something, try to change it.” Hear the Word of the Lord from Exodus chapter 14.

We lived in Dubuque for four years while I was in seminary.

On a beautiful Saturday our first summer there, we got a call from Julie’s Uncle Marvin and Aunt Jan in Cedar Rapids. They were bringing their speed boat up to Dubuque for an afternoon on the Mississippi River, and they asked if we wanted to join them? Uh, yaaa!

Within a few hours of hanging up the phone, we were cruising down the river like we owned the place – sun shining bright in a cloudless sky, hair blowing in the breeze, a cooler filled with delicious refreshment in the stern.

After an hour or so of juking around other boats, jet-skis and barge tows, Uncle Marvin suggested that we beach the boat on a sandbar and have ourselves a shore lunch. So he carefully steered toward an empty stretch of sand on a small, downriver island.

When the boat’s bow nudged the sand, three or four feet of water still separated us and dry land, so someone was going to have to jump out and pull the boat the rest of the way to the beach. As the second-oldest male on board that day, the dock-boy duty fell to me. So, up to the bow I went, and over gunwale I peered. Mississippi river-water isn’t known for its sparkling clarity, so I had no clue how deep the water would be when I jumped overboard.

It wasn’t exactly a white-knuckle moment, but it WAS my first time out on the Mississippi, so nervous anticipation had me erring on the side of caution when it came to jumping into waters of an unknown depth. But, really, there shouldn’t have been reason to worry. The boat was already hitting the sand bottom, so there couldn’t be much more than a few inches of water below me, right?

So into the water I went with bowline in hand, ready to pull us fully onto the beach. And I was right. I stepped off the boat into just a few inches of water. No harm, no foul; other than –

When my aqua-socked feet hit bottom, they didn’t land on firm sand. I hit soupy quicksand that wasted no time in sucking me down up to the middle of my calves. Of course, my three kids thought the sight of old dad stuck in quicksand was incredibly amusing, and so in a valiant effort to save some sense of my fatherly dignity, I managed to pull one leg out of the quicksand, and with one aqua-sock now missing from my foot, I took a brave step forward – only to get sucked down even farther into quicksand – almost up to me knees.

By now, the jeers and jokes at my expense were flying from stem to stern of Uncle Marvin’s boat. Apparently when you’re NOT the one stuck in the mud, you suddenly become an expert in the fine art of freeing yourself from quicksand. But no worries. With sloppy, stumbling grace, I managed to stagger and belly-flop my way to dry land and got Uncle Marvin’s boat fully beached, and everyone enjoyed our time on that little spit of sand. Tra, la-la, la-la.

Even so, the whole sordid quicksand affair remains, to this day, a dark stain on the dignity of American fatherhood. But what could I do? I was caught between Uncle Marvin and the muddy Mississippi shallows, and someone had to be the first to take the first step.

Someone had to be the first to take the first step that fateful day on the west shore of the Red Sea, too.

Being caught between Uncle Marvin and the muddy Mississippi shallows is one thing, but when you’re caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, most everything you believe, or thought you believed, gets put to the ultimate test.

In times of crisis, all the old pat answers, all the most tried-and-true sayings, all those seemingly sturdy slogans on motivational posters that had supported you in the past suddenly begin to feel brittle. Others figuratively crumble to dust. When your back is to the wall, even those things you yourself once said to people – “hang in there,” “you can do it” – sound only irritating when others now speak them to you in your own dark night of the soul.

When you are between the devil and the deep blue sea, much of what you believe will be tested, refined, and clarified. Hopefully, your faith will come out stronger and more honest as a result. But there is also the possibility, grim though it is to admit, that your faith may be so badly shaken as to lead you, however briefly, to doubt and despair.

Whether we understand the panic the Israelites felt, whether we can identify with the dreadful things they said about God and about Moses’s leadership, the fact is we know what happens: The sea opens up, and the Israelites pass through safely. Pharoah and company are defeated by that same sea, and the people repent of their doubt and give thanks to God for revealing the fullness of his might.

We know what happens, but do we know why it all happens?

Why does God need to subject the Israelites to this watery crossing? Perhaps, as another suggests, because God’s people needed to be baptized.

Over and over again in the Bible, water can be at once the source of death and the source of life. God draws life out of the waters of death, using water to preserve Moses and Israel by carving out a path of safety in a vast sea of chaos. God’s people don’t fully avoid the threatening waters but are somehow preserved through them. Were it not for God’s grace, the Israelites would have been consumed.

Water is dangerous. It can suck you in. And the Israelites had good reason to feel scared when their only escape route from the chaos of Egypt is blocked by the chaos of the sea. When God tells them to “move on,” it surely looks like the Lord himself is intent on drowning the whole bunch.

“Move on!? … Move on to precisely where?”

Death is behind us, death is before us. We’re caught between the devil and the deep blue sea! That is our painful human lot in our fallen world. Death is all around us, and on our own, no matter which direction we travel, we sooner or later will bump into barriers from which there is no escape.

It is at that moment when the words of Moses, now heard in light of Christ, need to ring in your ears and take root in your heart: “Do not be afraid. The Lord will fight for you. You need only believe that.” Or as from an angel, “The Lord is with you. Do not be afraid, for you have found favor with God.”

Or as Jesus himself puts it: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in me for I am the way, the truth and the life.”

A blessed assurance to be sure, but the way, truth and life of Jesus lead through a cross – through the chaotic waters of death, if you will. Baptism ensures that we journey with him through those stormy waters, but like Moses, Israel, Jesus, and untold numbers of Christians since, new life emerges from the waters of death. Which makes Jesus our very own Red Sea!

We live in a world of death and fear and distrust and division.

But Christians of all people – marching as we do under the sign of a cross – should know that we CANNOT ignore and DO NOT escape the realities of death and fear and distrust and division. If there is new life to be had, a new and better country in which we hope one day to arrive, it will emerge through the waters of death, as somehow the water that drowns all that is evil becomes for us, by an alchemy of grace, a river of life flowing from the throne of God.

That walk of faith isn’t easy. Death isn’t something we take lightly. We baptize our children and believe that the power and might of our Lord Jesus will preserve our little ones come what may. And we send our children out into a world of violence so intense that we cannot help but fret, cannot help but wish it were a safer world, cannot help but think that longer walls, more guns, and better-trained soldiers will somehow, someway, keep us safe. That’s the way life often feels in a dangerous world. But in faith we go on.

We press forward and do what the Israelites had to do: Live by the promise of God’s might. Move on knowing God will fight the battle. Sally forth believing that love is stronger than death, that the One who said “Surely I am with you, always” meant what he said. And that the waters of baptism THROUGH WHICH we have already passed and IN WHICH our sinful selves have drowned will somehow become for us a source of unending life. Those same waters of baptism assure that we are finally safe somehow.

There’ll always be times when we feel caught between the devil and the deep blue sea – or simply hung up between Uncle Marvin and the muddy Mississippi shallows.

But thanks be to God that, in Christ Jesus, the way through that sea has opened wide as we follow our risen Lord to the fullness of mighty glory that he has prepared for you and me. And getting to that glorious place demands that someone be the first to take the first step – following behind that gracious pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night, come hell or high water.

Listen to the Word that God has spoken.

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on the Second Sunday of Advent, November 17, 2024, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by B. Janet Hibbs, Scott Hoezee, and Anthony Rostain inform the message. Video and audio of Exodus 14 is by Gideon Films.

From the Pastor: A Prayer for Veterans Day

Once crimson poppies bloomed out in a foreign field,
each memory reminds where brutal death was sealed.
The crimson petals flutter down,
still hatred forms a thorny crown.
– Stanza 1, Remembrance

Wise and compassionate God, you know as well as we do that the wounds of war are slow to heal, and sadly, some wounds continue to fester long after silence comes to the battlefield.

Our veterans are not the only ones feeling and living with the pain of violence and conflict. Too many of our friends and family members limp and stumble along bearing the pain of shrapnel that tore into their flesh amid life’s many skirmishes with evil and brokenness.

And so, now, we not only lift up our veterans in prayer, but we also lift up the other wounded warriors of our day – those people whose days are filled with frightening flashbacks, those people whose night’s sleep is waterlogged in cold sweat.

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayers for those most on our hearts this day …

We pray for understanding. Help us truly hear and appreciate the stories of life’s veterans. Open our minds and hearts to the isolation many of them feel, even though they are surrounded with familiar faces every day. Remind them often that while their friends and neighbors may never fully understand, you do understand and can identify with them in everything.

We pray for healing. You know how deep the wounds of life’s battles go. You know the loss that many of our veterans and others feel in body and soul. You know the memories that haunt them and the scars that many of them continue to carry. Please bring healing to them and to all who are hurting. Grant patience and compassion to those around them who cannot understand but can sometimes help the healing.

Almighty God, you know each of us by name. You know our deeds, our hard work, and our perseverance. You know our needs, both material and spiritual. Please draw each of us closer to you and grant us all the peace that passes understanding. May the peace of Christ rule in our hearts forevermore.

Lord, in your mercy, hear about prayers …

Not Now, Not Yet

One of Scripture’s many blessings comes its invitation to see ourselves in its story.

With the insight of the Holy Spirit, you see yourself in a character, living in a community, having a conversation with another. Maybe even with the Lord himself! The poetry of ancient psalms lifts your heart to God in praise and thanksgiving, cries out from the depths of your fear and doubt, and seeks the redemption of body, mind, soul, and spirit.

You sympathize with Old Testament pain and suffering; you empathize with Gospel confusion and betrayal; you recognize the familiar voice of the Lord whispering in your ear through apostolic letters from Paul, Peter, and John.

As another season of Advent begins, Scripture invites us to see ourselves in two particular biblical stories.

From the New Testament comes Luke’s unique and “orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us” in the birth of Jesus (Luke 1:1). As we experienced earlier in the service, those events begin their unfolding in an angel’s delivery of stunning word to Zechariah that his wife, Elizabeth, will bear a son.

From the Old Testament comes the story of the exodus, the epic tale of God’s people fleeing slavery in Egypt. A handful of Advent lessons will bring us to the shore of the Red Sea and through its parted waters. God’s people are walking freedom’s path in both joy and thanksgiving, in both fear and confusion. That much feels like the times in which we are living today.

To better understand our snippet of Advent lessons from the Old Testament book of Exodus, here’s some helpful background.

Ancient, ever-true words now invite you to see yourself in the story of the exodus, in the story of Emmanuel, God with Us. Listen to the Word that God has spoken.

When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was nearer; for God thought, “If the people face war, they may change their minds and return to Egypt.”

So God led the people by the roundabout way of the wilderness toward the Red Sea. The Israelites went up out of the land of Egypt prepared for battle. And Moses took with him the bones of Joseph who had required a solemn oath of the Israelites, saying, “God will surely take notice of you, and then you must carry my bones with you from here.”

They set out from Succoth, and camped at Etham, on the edge of the wilderness. The LORD went in front of them in a pillar of cloud by day, to lead them along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light, so that they might travel by day and by night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people. (Exodus 13:17-22 NRSV)

In the race for president, my gal lost, and the other guy won.

It is what it is: A ball of disappointment, wrapped in a layer of anger, tied together with strings of fear. And the social media cry out: “Pray for our nation. Pray for our leaders.” But I just can’t. I know how to pray, but I simply don’t know what to pray.

In 2005, the day after a tsunami inundated south Asia, a TV reporter interviewed waterlogged survivors. In the background, a call to prayer rang out from the minaret of a Muslim mosque. The reporter asked the group, “Are you going?” Some nodded yes and rose to their feet. But one man, who’d lost his entire family in the deluge, shook his head. “No,” he said, “not now. Now I do not have it in me to pray.” A fellow preacher, Mary Luti, offers a bracing assessment of the moment –

“His ‘no’ struck me as a theological necessity, a moment of accountability. To keep God out of it, at least for now, was to lay bare a truth that piety often papers over: that there are times when the very thought of God is unbearable, when there’s no moment but this awful moment, when nothing exists outside this monstrous loss, when nothing is real but pain.”

In such moments, beliefs about God – God didn’t cause this, God is with us in suffering, all will be well – take a back seat to one’s capacity to be nakedly truthful and brutally honest, even if it means that what once passed for faith is lost, and what replaces it is a permanent open-ended question: What now, what next?

“Pray for our nation, prayer for our leaders?” But what, but how?

With understandable intent, we Christians tend to blanket the great emptiness of our wilderness times with hopeful assurances. We are, after all, a Christmas and Easter people! But sometimes human suffering demands that we respect its despair and not hurry it to hope. Our haste to get Jesus into the manger, on and off the Cross, and into his glory may be a reason so many doubt the Good News.

Someday that man may pray again. But, as Pastor Luti suggests, “the mystery of his suffering forbids us even to wonder. Not now. Now the silence, now the stripped and vacant heart.” As for me, my groans are with the psalmist: “For my life is spent with sorrow, my years with sighing. I am an object of dread to my friends; I have passed out of mind like one who is dead.”

So save me, Lord, please, from the fake piety that disallows my neighbor’s despair, the hasty faith that makes Christmas and Easter easier to doubt and too quickly packed away. In your mercy, be my “pillar of fire shining forth in the night.” And if not pillar or cloud, as my “gal” suggested in concession, then “fill the [night] sky with the light of a brilliant, brilliant billion of stars.”

I heard something of the Lord’s response in a text my daughter, Mary, shared in our family group chat last Wednesday morning: “Thinking of you all today – I know our hearts are in the same place.” For now, in this our exodus place of transition and uncertainty, that’ll have to do. For even a fragment of grace is sufficient.

And the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard.” (Luke 1:13)

Amen, and amen!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on the First Sunday of Advent, November 10, 2024, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. The national elections were held the previous Tuesday.