Isaiah 64: 1-9
Psalm 80: 1-7, 17-19
1 Corinthians 1: 3-9
Mark 13: 24-37

"Oh for the good old days, when all the newspapers had ‘good news' and there were very few reports of murders and robberies and corruption in politics. And we respected our politicians, and they deserved that respect!"

"Oh, the good old days, the days when students respected teachers and children respected parents."

"Oh do you remember the days of full churches, when all families came, all the members of all the families, children AND the teenagers! Oh, the singing!"

"Oh, remember the good old days. The days when neighbours visited back and forth, not to borrow something, or to collect for this or that, but just to visit?"

"Remember how your kids told you that they loved you when they were pre-schoolers. Now they just say, "Can I have some money and the car keys? PULEAAASE Dad! " "

The people of Israel had endured great hardship. Years before, they had been warned, they had ignored the warnings. They had been overrun by the enemy and taken into exile. Now, after many years in exile they longed to return to their land, to the land that God had given to them. They longed for a visible and unmistakable sign of God's presence. They cried out through the words of their prophets, "O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence--". They wanted the presence of God that their ancestors enjoyed in the good old days - they wanted smoke and thunder and burning bushes and tablets of stone and crossings of the Red Sea and the Jordan.

(Pause)

Happy new year! You heard me, happy new year! Just as our secular new year which begins on January 1 is a time of hope and renewal so is our liturgical new year. We have come full circle since last year. We come now to this place to begin again the cycle of hope and expectation. During the last 25 or so weeks, since the day of Pentecost, we have been reading passages in which God's faithful people, have been called to faithfulness. WE have been encouraged to do the work of the kingdom. Yet, we arrive at this first Sunday of Advent in the realization that the Reign of Christ is not yet here. Our efforts have not brought it in; nor can they. The world is still in a mess; nations are not at peace, and we may very well be on the brink of war. Various groups, including the United Church are urging world leaders to work for peace. Countries in Africa are being devastated by famine and by the disease we call AIDS. Globalization is eroding our prosperity and not improving the day to day lives of those who are working in sweatshops making our goods or working in unsafe conditions growing our coffee and our exotic fruits and vegetables. We wonder what to do; we wonder what we CAN do. The ratification of the Kyoto accord seems to be the right solution for the ecology of the planet but we wonder about the economy of our country and our jobs. In many ways, we're not all that different from the people this Isaiah passage was written for.

Despite the myriad of tensions with which we must live, and perhaps because of these tensions, we come again to hear God's promises and to commit ourselves to them and we commit ourselves to the belief that God's power will be revealed in God's own ways and in God's own time. We come to commit ourselves and our lives to the ways of God as revealed in that first Advent for which we hope, the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.

The season of Advent looks back to a time when people of faith yearned for a Saviour; a time of hope in the midst of hopelessness. Like the prophet who penned the passage from the book of Isaiah, we too cry out to God to come down, to fix the problems, to make the world a better place, to let everyone know "who is boss". We hope for that which is "too good to be true", a new and unique expression of God's promise to save a world that has ‘gone wrong'.

In Advent we celebrate fresh beginnings. In Advent we celebrate the grace of a God who does not give us what we deserve, but instead acts in love and grace to save us. Much like a loving parent will try over and over to show love and compassion to both a faithful and a wayward child, so this God will act to save the people. The image used in this passage from Isaiah is that of a potter, fashioning and refashioning the vessel until it is just right, not being satisfied at imperfection.

The images from the gospel passage speak of a sudden in-breaking of the power and glory of God, in Christ, into human experience and history. Reading this passage at the beginning of Advent prepares us for the birth of the babe of Bethlehem, and it also looks toward a future Advent, a second coming of the Christ in power and glory.

We are called to foster an awareness of the in-breaking of God's presence, into our lives, into our hearts and into our hurting and needy world. There are many forces which would tell us that God is irrelevant in today's world; that as human beings we must solve our own problems. We are to be open to the movement of the Spirit in our midst, go with that movement to the best of our abilities and let God worry about the rest.

We are to go about our day to day tasks, open to the presence of God, watching for opportunities to proclaim God's grace, open to the many ways in which God's grace is made known to us: in the smile of a baby, in the kindness of a stranger, in the words of a hymn or a passage of scripture, in the midst of the worshipping community or in the work-a-day world in which we live. It's not about watching so that we can have superior or special knowledge but so that we can be instruments of God's grace in the world.

In a few moments we will gather as a community around the table and celebrate the Lord's Supper, which has been a sigh and symbol of the presence of the risen Christ for almost 2000 years. In a mysterious way the bread and juice which we offer to God and consume become living symbols of Christ's presence. Like the disciples who welcomed the stranger at the end of their walk to Emmaus, we too may discover the Risen Lord in our midst.

We celebrate today as a community gathered here and we celebrate in a mystical way with those who have gathered with us in the past, and with all those around the world who also believe and gather in the name of the Christ, the Risen One, the One who is Coming into the world, not just on Christmas but each and every day.

We are called to be an Advent people as much as we are called to be an Easter people. We are called to celebrate the risen Christ, but we are also called to be open to the ways in which God's power comes to us. We are called to be a people who believe that our God will come to us, ion ways expected and unexpected, and that ultimately, our God's purposes will be fulfilled, if not now, in God's time.

Our God purposes will be fulfilled. O Come, O Come, and redeem your people.

Amen.

Isaiah 40: 1-11
Psalm 85: 1-2, 8-13
2 Peter 3: 8-15a
Mark 1: 1-8

Comfort and Challenge

Sisters In The Wilderness by Charlotte Gray is the story of two sisters, member of the British upper classes, who journey with their husbands to the wilderness of Upper Canada in the early 19th century. Being from wealthy families who were accustomed to many servants and much leisure they were quite unaccustomed to the kind of work necessary to scratch out a living as 19th century farmers. In both their cases, the women are the most resourceful of each couple. In their spare time they write about their lives and their hopes and aspirations and because of this occupation, unusual for women of that time, we know much about the daily lives of the common Canadian!

One of the great drawbacks to life in that day and age was the lack of adequate overland transportation. When I was in elementary or junior high school I learned about corduroy roads. They were constructed by laying down a solid row of logs placed side to side. Clearing land for the road gave them ample material for the road but, as you can imagine the road was quite bumpy. It makes the road from St Louis to Kouchibouguac a rough concrete road that has not held up very well but which the government can only replace in sections. This section should be replaced next year. look positively smooth. According to the sisters Gray writes about the weather often made the roads impassable, making a journey from one place to another an ordeal at best, and impossible at worst. A journey of a few miles to visit a friend or relative was a major undertaking and many people went for months or years without leaving their own isolated farms. Road-work ,at least in the Maritimes, has always been a major tool of vote buying and political patronage, because, like health care and education, it affects everyone.

In today's passages from both Isaiah and Mark, the image of building a road is employed as a metaphor for preparing the way for God's redemptive action. Perhaps a little background would be helpful. The Biblical story notes several major events as benchmarks for the people of Israel, one being the Exodus and another, the Exile. This passage comes at the end of the Exile. The first writer of the book of Isaiah had warned that the people would be punished if they did not follow God's ways and, to make a very long story short, when they did not, they were attacked and defeated. 200 years later another person picks up the prophetic mantle of Isaiah and announces that God is going to act once more to save his people and return them to Jerusalem. God's forgiveness will take Israel, once more, from captivity to freedom. The debt has been paid. Het time in the prison of exile has been served. Like most of the Hebrew prophets, Isaiah does not talk so much about personal liberation as he does about God acting to save the whole people. The images and metaphors are those of road building, from nature, and of herding sheep. To build the roads the is the work of filling in the holes and levelling the hills. The ebb and flow of the seasons is noted with crops and flowers coming and going and the loving care of a shepherd for the sheep is noted and held up. Throughout all of these images though, the message is clear, God is acting once more to save the chosen people. God's love is constant and unchanging; God's love does not come and go as the grasses of the field and the flowers on the hillsides.

Now we fast-forward things hundreds of years; the people, having long ago returned to their land, are in a kind of internal exile, that of Roman occupation. The oppression was severe and there were those who collaborated with the Romans and those who opposed the Romans and were brutally punished. The people, for the most part, tried to get by, day to day and walked as best they could the line that enabled them to follow the religious and the political laws and feed their families. The time was ripe once more for God's prophetic word. The time was right for a word of hope and of liberation. It came in the form of a wild-man from the Judean back-country. While it is said that he was the son of a revered priest, he did not appear to be of that ‘class or occupation. He dressed in skins and ate a rather strange diet: locusts and honey. His ministry was once of preaching repentance and of baptizing those who came out to hear him. Now, we are used to baptism as a sign of entry into the Christian community. We baptize our own children and we baptize adults, even adults who were not rased in Christian homes. For the Jewish community in John's day baptism was reserved for those who were converting from a Gentile religion to Judaism. John, it seems, was calling his own people to be baptized. He was calling them to repent and be baptized as a sign of that repentance. The word repent was the same as the word to ‘turn around', as if one was heading for Moncton and then all of a sidden decided to turn and go to Fredericton. And to add an interesting aside to the message he insisted that he was not the real prophet, that he was only preparing the people for God's real messenger. In Lent we hear the story of Jesus himself being baptized by John, as if the prophetic mantle is passing from John to Jesus. In Advent we seek to connect John's preaching to Jesus' birth and, by implication, his ministry.

While the overall emphasis of Advent has changed over the years, from one of repentance, to once of hope, the lectionary still includes those passages which speak of turning around, of repenting, of making the rough places smooth. The dual images of road-building and of changing directions on a journey are perfect ones for talking about how we can prepare our lives for the coming of God's messenger. While, you might say, we did that last year and the year before that, we are called to recognize that much of our lives have a cyclical kind of flow, and that while we may not go around in circles, we often spiral around, moving along our journey in a series of circles, growing in faith as we journey along. We make mistakes, we change our priorities, we change, we make other mistakes, we change our priorities and we journey some more in the light of what we have learned, and so on and so on.

Sometimes we think that a sermon on repentance and a sermon on love do not really go together, but they do. The biblical message and the prophetic traditions have always held the two together in creative tension. God does not love us less when we do not follow, but God always holds out to us the importance of following in the ways of faithfulness. We are called to this life of faithfulness because God loves us.

And, of course, we are called to this life of faithfulness while we work, raise families, volunteer, go to school, and contribute to our families and communities in which we live. Our faith journey is not something we ‘do' when we are not busy at something else, it is what we do, what we learn about ourselves and our God, and who we are ‘becoming' at the same time as we are going about our regular lives.

In Advent we are called to pause within those lives, and within those lives, to look at our own journey. We are called to ask ourselves questions, and sometimes these are hard questions. We are called to ask ourselves if our direction and our priorities in our living are the same as those we hold in our believing. I think that sometimes we just get caught up in the ways of the world and go along without really questioning our direction, or believing that it is too hard to change or to be different.

Advent holds out to us the hope that change is possible, and that our loving God is still acting to give us life and hope and love in great abundance.

All during this season we are bombarded with messages of ‘the season'. Every store we enter is playing Christmas Carols, I presume, in the hopes that you will spend your money in their store to make that special someone happy. In our highly commercialized culture, Christmas has become a time of giving things, and of receiving things. I wonder how much money is spent in one person trying to prove his or her love to another by spending large amounts of money. How much debt is incurred in the process. Children are so mesmerized by the toy displays at the stores, the commercials on TV, by the Christmas lists of their friends, and by the Sears Wish Book, that they can certainly be excused for not really knowing that Christmas is not really about presents but about the presence of God who has come to us in Jesus of Nazareth. In the midst of all of the preparation for the giving of presents and the eating of ‘turkey with all of the trimmings' the season of Advent asks us to pause and take a look at our lives and our faith journey.

Advent is the time for us to take a long look at that road that we have built between God and us; that road that God wishes to use to come to us. Do we need to give it a good going over? Do we need to resurface it, or like some roads in Kent County, the county the government's Department of Transportation forgot !!!!!, rip it up and start, almost from scratch. Does the road really go where we want it to?

The good news is that God IS with us, even as we wait for God's presence to be made known in Jesus of Nazareth this Christmas. The good news is that this rebuilding and all of this work is worth it in terms of our relationship to God and to our loved ones. God came in Jesus of Nazareth came to give us life and so that we could have this life in great abundance, yet many of the habits into which we fall, and the decisions we make effectively deny this gift of a great and loving God.

So as we continue on our Advent journey, let us consciously prepare the way. Let us seek to make straight the road so that we can know once more, the loving and liberating presence of our God, this Christmas and always.

AMEN!

Isaiah 61: 1-4, 8-11
Psalm 126
1 Thessalonians 5: 16-24
John 1: 6-8, 19-28

A number of years ago, in Vacation Bible School, in the church I was then serving, a short, little song went with the curriculum. "Only A Boy named David" told of all that the great King David was able to accomplish on behalf of his people when he was still only a child. Now I'm not sure we really need to be extolling the virtues of small children taking sling-shots and firing rocks at big people, but I do know that a little boy named David who attended the Bible School that summer, felt very special when we all sang it. In his four year old mind, it was really about him.

As part of our Bible study this past week we read the first two verses of this passage from Isaiah over and over again and each time we placed the name of a member of the study in the blanks. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Irene, upon Janet, upon Alice, upon Beth because the LORD has anointed Irene, and Janet, and Alice, and Beth, he has sent Irene, and Janet, and Alice, and Beth to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour."

You will no doubt recall that when Jesus spoke in his hometown synagogue and connected his own life and ministry to the FULFILMENT of these grand hopes and promises, he was almost lynched. While I don't think we should go around in the notion that we are Jesus, it is not a bad thing for us to see ourselves in the biblical text, both as the recipients of its benefits, and as those who help to bring the promises about.

In the gospel lesson once again this week we encounter John, the somewhat odd prophet and preacher from the back country of Judea. We are told elsewhere that he dressed in camel skin and ate bugs and honey It seems that people were having a difficult time with him. Who was he? Well they KNEW his name. It seems though that they know somehow that he was more than John, son of Zechariah, the priest and his wife Elizabeth. It was even said that he was their ‘miracle child', but who was he, really? The idea of one of the prophets of old coming back to life was not all that unbelievable in Jesus's day. People must have been scratching their heads and, since there was nothing in their experience to explain what was happening, they looked to their history.

In today's passage John himself seeks to connect his ministry to the prophesies of the Isaiah who preached to those in exile that they would one day be returned to Jerusalem.

A little background would be helpful. The Biblical story notes several major events as benchmarks for the people of Israel, one being the Exodus and the other, the Exile. The passage quoted by John was likely written toward the end of this. The first writer of the book of Isaiah had warned that the people would be punished if they did not follow God's ways and, to make a very long story short, when they did not, they were attacked and defeated and dragged off into captivity. After they had been in exile a generation, or more, another person picked up the prophetic mantle of Isaiah and announced that God was going to act once more to save his people and return them to Jerusalem. God's forgiveness would take Israel, once more, from captivity to freedom. The images and metaphors are those of road building, levelling and straightening. Years ago, it seems, that many roads were build by following the habitual travelling patterns of the early settlers. As the roads were upgraded the same path was followed. Then, one day, someone decided that if there were fewer curves and turns the roads would be safer and the traffic could move more quickly. Occasionally a visit by a powerful person would call for a great deal of road maintenance. Some things never change! If a member of the Royal Family or a group of world leaders is coming to town the road crews are given plenty of money to work with, so that the visitors have the best possible trip. The areas that are not on the ‘official itinerary' are all but forgotten! This image is used by Isaiah to show that his message, his preaching, is the ‘road work' whose purpose is to compel the necessary change and rebuilding of the people's spiritual and religious lives so that God could come to them, as a Ruler worthy of honour, praise, and devotion.

Now we fast-forward things hundreds of years; the people, having long returned to their land and, are in a different kind of exile. This time it is an internal kind, that of Roman occupation. The oppression was severe and there were those who collaborated with the Romans and they could do quite well. But there were those who opposed the Romans and they were brutally punished, often by a speedy trial and execution by the usually slow and very painful method of crucifixion. The every-day folks, for the most part, tried to get by, day to day and walked as best they could, the fine line between being good Jews and good citizens of territory controlled by the Roman army. The time was ripe once more for God's prophetic word. The time was right for a word of hope and of liberation. The time was right for God's saving and liberating action!

Of course, we believe that it came in Jesus of Nazareth. But first, in order to prepare the way, to build, straighten and level the road, there was a need for another Isaiah, a prophet, a preparing preacher. This preacher, this wild-man from the Judean back country preached and baptized those who confessed their sin and desired to lead a new life. Normally, baptism was reserved for non-Jews who wished to convert to Judaism, but John, it seems, offered it to his own people.

So, here we are, ready and willing to celebrate Christmas, at least in church. We want to hear the familiar story of God's love for us in the baby of Bethlehem. We want to hear tales of shepherds and strange eastern visitors and know that the message of ‘peace on earth and good will to all' also applies to us, almost 2000 years later.

Have you ever gone on a trip and had the children accompanying you whine, over and over, "Are we there yet?" You had to answer, "No!" all the while wishing that you were! Yet you know that it takes a certain amount of time to drive from point A to point B and doing so faster would either be illegal, very dangerous, or impossible. So you get the kids to play games such as looking for ‘punch buggies' or counting the cars with one headlight, or tell stories, or hope that they fall asleep.

Our Advent journey is designed to take the time it does because we need to prepare for the birth of the baby of Bethlehem. Human biology tells us that it takes 9 months from conception to birth in a so called ‘normal' pregnancy and despite a mother's wish to hold the baby in her arms sooner, unless there are medical reasons for doing otherwise, the process cannot be rushed. There are many things to do: paint the nursery, buy a crib and come clothes, buy a baby seat, a stroller, a playpen and a high chair, plastic dishes, bottles and sippy cups, prepare the older children for the new arrival, save a bit of money, eat properly, see a doctor regularly, and on and on.

We have much to do to prepare for the birth of Jesus; and I'm not talking presents and food and travel plans. At Christmas it's not just a baby's arrival we celebrate, but the in-breaking of God into the human realm. It is a birth that has the power to change our lives, if we let it, and if we are prepared.

Advent calls us to take a look at our own lives. Advent calls us to take a look at our own priorities. Advent calls us to rebuild the road of faith, a road that may have become shabby with lack of use, or even heavy traffic over the past year. The passage from Thessalonians gives us a good place to start:

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.

Do not quench the Spirit.

Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything;

hold fast to what is good;

abstain from every form of evil.

We are on a holy journey. We have come a long way but we still have a long way to go. Let us slow down in our frantic preparations for the tinsel and presents and food and all of that, and prepare, to be changed this Christmas. Let us prepare our lives so that we will recognize the many ways in which God will come to us, not just at Christmas, but at all times. Emmanuel will come to us, here in Kent County, in 2002 AND 2003 and beyond, we can be changed by this arrival, but we need to be prepared, to be ready, to lay down a good road, a way through the wilderness of our schedules, our plans and our expectations. Our God will come to us, let's not rush things, but instead, slow down, and prepare for the holy event.

Amen.

1 Samuel 7: 1-11, 16
Luke 1: 47-55
Romans 16: 25-27
Luke 1: 26-38

How Will We Respond?

Imagine this for a minute, will you? Imagine for a minute that you receive a visit from an angel who announces to you that YOU are going to be the mother of the Messiah! Who is the Messiah, you ask? Come on, you know the one. THE ONE who has been promised for generations. THE ONE who will free us from all that ails us. THE ONE that your parents and grandparents talked about and their parents and grandparents before them. They talked about what great and marvellous things were promised in relation to this messiah. It sounded like heaven on earth. You remember those promises, the ones that, in your more cynical moments, you thought were just fantasy, just pipe dreams, mere fables designed to take the edge off of the pain and the anguish of oppression and lost hopes and dreams.

What would you say? What would yopur gut reaction be? Personally, I think the author of Luke left something out! There must have been more protest, more of ‘not me'. There must have been more than, "this is impossible, for biological reasons. There must have been protests such as "I am not able to be the mother of the messiah. I am not strong enough, not religious enough, not good enough." There must have been an, "I'm just a poor kid from a small village. There must be someone in Jerusalem. There must be someone with closer ties to royalty and power and history. There must be someone else. This must e a mistake. Are you sure you have the right person, God?"

We do not know what protests she uttered, what doubts were voiced and un-voiced. All we have are her words as recorded in Luke's gospel: " Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word." Then, of course, we have the magnificent song of faith and hope, the song we commonly call "The Magnificat". It is a song with strong biblical roots, a song that speaks of ancient history of the Hebrew people. It was a history formed and surrounded by God's grace and actions on behalf

of the people.
The Exodus.
The first temple.
The return after the Exile.
Even though it was not as grand, the second temple.
Their very existence as a nation.

God had been true to the promise to David: God had built a nation for them.

God WAS always faithful, but sometimes the people forgot and went their own way. Mary's speech of faith and hope on that day proclaims that the birth of Jesus is another in a long series of actions which are intended to bring about the salvation of God's own people. But it is not ‘just' another one, it is something new and unique. This one will be the pinnacle of God's great and glorious actions, just you wait and see.

Mary's task was to be the mother of Jesus. Our task as Christians is similar, to bear witness to the good news of Jesus with our words and our lives. We are to be bearers of the Christ, not only the Christ-child, but the grown up Christ, wherever we are and to those to whom we are called.

WOW! It is an awesome task. It is a task that we need to take seriously. It is a task that should also fill us with a certain amount of fear and questioning. But it is a task that we can indeed, all fulfill, by God's grace. It is a task we can fulfil because, ultimately, it is God's work and not ours.

And so we come to December 22, 2003. Just hours till Christmas. Just hours away from the frenzy and the feasting. For those who need to, just hours of shopping time left.

The question though, is not, really, how will we celebrate Christmas on December 25, but how we will celebrate it on December 26, and January 6, and June 3 and October 24.

The scripture for today gives us much food for thought in this regard. Now, of course, we might say "that was then and this is now. Jesus was born long ago, and this is the story of those events from the perspective of faith. But what does it have to do with how I live from day to day, especially as we approach 2003."

It is all well and good to say that ‘nothing is impossible with God', but when we are the recipients of the call or the promise, when we are told that we have a major part to play, we may wonder why God has chosen us. We may not want to get involved. Surely God's plan will fail if it depends on us. Surely God can call someone else more capable, more faithful, someone more suited to this great task.

The short answer is, "NO"! God has not chosen someone else. God has chosen each of us to be the bearers of the good news made real in Jesus onf Nazareth. In Mary's song of praise, in Mary's faithfulness we find a model for our own, we find someone ready to step our in faith desite the obstacles and the difficulties.

We are reminded, as King David had to be reminded, that the primary actor in this whole drama is God. We are not in the business of making a name for ourselves. Our lives are to be lived to the praise of God and for the following of God's will and call to us.

We are not responsible for anything more that our stepping forward in faith and seeking to ‘let it happen according to God's plan'. Of course we are not just to sit back and let things happen, as if the way of life talked about by Mary was just going to fall out of the sky. Down through the ages God has always called people to take part in this great plan of salvation, of reversal, of hope and justice.

We must become involved in the work of lifting up the poor and the powerless and removing those from power who abuse it; we are called to be involved with feeding the hungry and making sure that at some point the rich no longer become so at the expense of the poor. We are to do what we can, and believe that with God's help and in God's time this great world of peace and justice will come about. It doesn't exactly ‘let us off the hook' but it does prevent us from becoming bogged sown in despair when our goals do not come to pass and it takes longer than we booked into our schedule. When I was in theological school we studied the issues surrounding apartheid in South Africa and the great oppression under which the non-whites of that country lived. The Berlin Wall was still standing and the divide between ‘the West' and the ‘Soviets' seemed destined to last forever. Not too long ago, just about every couple lost one or more children to diseases we consider virtually extinct, at least in the west. Things changed, because of faith, and perseverance and, I believe, because of the actions of people who believed that they were doing the work to which God has called them.

We face new problems though. We face an AIDS crisis that threatens entire African countries and a food crisis that threatens millions. We face a crisis in the middle east, on that will take courage and the wisdom of Solomon to solve. This is what Christmas is all about. It is about God being with us, when and where it matters, and in the ways that really matter. Its not just a nice image for greeting cards but a power that can change the world and bring it closer to God's vision for all of creation. We await "Emmanuel'; we await, "God with us". We truly do. Emmanuel will come. God will act to save us. God will act to save the world.

So I have great hope. I have great hope because I worship a God of life and hope. I worship a God who has many followers who believe in life rather than death, in hope rather than despair, in freedom rather than bondage, in abundance rather than scarcity.

We are called to bear this good news in word and deed.

How will we respond?