Episodes

  • On Account of Me

    On Account of Me
    Jun 20 2025

    “Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, so that through my being with you again your boasting in Christ Jesus will abound on account of me” (Philippians 1:24-25).

    Yesterday, Pastor Michael reflected on Paul’s indifference, even hope in anticipation of his death, but also of his commitment to life for the sake of the church. In today’s verses, Paul dives further into why he is committed to remaining an active part of the church that God is forming among the Gentiles.

    Paul’s reasons for staying include the church’s “progress and joy in the faith” as well as giving them reason to “boast in Christ Jesus.” Now, if you’re like me, growing up reading this passage and others in Paul’s corpus of letters where he makes similar statements, you might be asking yourself, “Doesn’t Paul sound a bit arrogant? Does the church really live or die by Paul’s presence?” Perhaps you’re willing to concede that Paul, significant character that he is in the story of Scripture, may be justified in such a claim. He started a lot of churches, had a pretty compelling way of talking about Jesus, and certainly was used by God in some remarkable ways.

    However, Paul’s confidence in the importance of his presence with the church is not rooted in his particular talents. He is not confident merely in his own gifts for the church, but the necessity of his role as part of the body of Christ as a whole. This means that the claims he makes about the progress and joy of the church, and the fact that believers can boast on account of him are words that can and should apply to any member of a church.

    We are likely familiar with Paul’s teaching on this subject in a different letter, his letter to the Corinthian church, where in chapter 12 he speaks of the necessity of all members of the body of Christ: “Suppose,” Paul says, “the foot says, ‘I am not a hand. So I don’t belong to the body.’ By saying this, it cannot stop being part of the body. And suppose the ear says, ‘I am not an eye. So I don’t belong to the body.’ By saying this, it cannot stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, how could it hear? If the whole body were an ear, how could it smell? God has placed each part in the body just as he wanted it to be . . . You are the body of Christ. Each one of you is a part of it.”

    The reason that Paul is convinced that he must stay with the church to encourage its progress and joy, to give it a reason to boast in Christ, is because this is true of every single member of the body. Each member of Christ’s church becomes an essential part of what God is doing in the world.

    Are you as convicted as Paul is that you are necessary to the body of Christ? Do you go to church on Sunday morning, provide leadership as an office bearer, on a ministry team, leading youth of various ages, or volunteering in any other capacity within Immanuel or beyond its walls in the assurance that your presence makes a tangible difference–that it will lead to others’ progress and joy in the faith, a reason to boast in Christ Jesus?

    If your answer to this is “no,” read Paul’s words again. They are as true of you, no matter who you are and what your role is in Christ’s body, as they were of Paul, transformative leader that he was. If your answer to this question is “yes,” what are you doing to make sure that others around you are convinced of the same truth? We are Christ’s body, and we have reason to remain members of one another and remind one another of why that is significant–for the sake of mutual joy and progress in the faith. For the sake of Christ and his kingdom.

    So as you journey on, go with the blessing of God:

    May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you: wherever he may send you. May he guide you through the wilderness: protect you through the storm. May he bring you home rejoicing; at the wonders he has shown you. May he bring you home rejoicing once again into our doors.
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    5 mins
  • Living & Dying Well

    Living & Dying Well
    Jun 19 2025

    “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body (Philippians 1:21-24).

    Thanks to Kyra for her wonderful series on “New Hope”. Now, back to Philippines.

    Our text helps us to accept our own impending death, a topic many avoid. Historically, people died at home, with family present. In many places, this is still the case. But in Canada, many die in hospitals or nursing homes, often alone. Their bodies are quickly moved to the morgue or sent to the crematorium, families not knowing what to do with death.

    It is the worst possible event for those who believe they have an inalienable right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. We cope with death by ignoring its existence. When I started in ministry, most families had a notion of what to do when a loved one died. Today, I often hear the question, “What are we supposed to do?” There are no cultural norms or rituals for responding to death. Preparation for it is avoided. Consider the effort put into staying young and fit.

    Into this vacuum, Christians enter with a different story. Paul is writing from his prison in Rome, knowing that execution is likely. So, both Paul and the Philippians are confronted with the specter of his imminent death. Paul is conflicted in this passage. He sees advantages both in dying and in staying alive.

    Paul has been saying, “Living well means seeking the glory of Christ.” This has been his motto since he met Jesus on the road to Damascus. When he dies, he will finally be with Christ and his sinfulness will no longer detract from his Lord’s glory.

    As Christians, we believe that there is life after death, even the resurrection of our physical bodies. And that life is better than this one. Many people do not have this hope. To be with Christ is far better than to be here, says Paul. Do you believe that? When we do, it impacts how we live and how we view death.

    Paul’s conflict is that he also believes the Philippian church still needs his service: “…it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.” He is willing to stay. He is willing to sacrifice his own gain for the sake of the church. He lives what he will later write, “Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others” (2:4). Paul believes that continued life is a greater sacrifice than dying.

    Let me put it plainly, physical life or death are not of ultimate importance to Paul. Living means carrying out his calling to preach Christ and dying means gaining conformity with Christ’s death and fellowship with him. He hopes for the outcome that will most clearly advance the gospel of Christ. This strikes us as strange if we have allowed the comforts of our present physical existence to have higher priority than Christ. Paul is astonishingly indifferent toward his own death. He invites us to take the same attitude.

    This is not, of course, to say that mourning is out of place for the Christian when loved ones die. The fact that they are with the Lord does not take away from our experience of loss. Tears are proper for believers. Jesus himself wept. We can face our own death with assurance, but not with indifference to those who will miss us.

    As you journey on, go with the blessing of God:

    May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you: wherever he may send you. May he guide you through the wilderness: protect you through the storm. May he bring you home rejoicing; at the wonders he has shown you. May he bring you home rejoicing once again into our doors.
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    6 mins
  • Tree of Life

    Tree of Life
    Jun 18 2025
    “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever” (Rev. 22:1-5). Coming to the end of working through themes related to suffering and healing in connection with the New Hope program and hearing stories about our siblings in Christ in the global church, today we are going to talk about the opportunities for “looking forward” in community which are necessary to healing. In the final weeks of the New Hope program, we invite participants to complete two activities. First, we invite them to write down a source of pain, a sin, a situation or relationship causing suffering which they have reflected on over the course of the program, and write it on a slip of paper. We then burn these slips of paper at the foot of a wooden cross, with prayer and singing, choosing to surrender them to God. Having led the New Hope program over the course of a week in South Sudan, I was doubtful about its impact on some participants. There were three young women in my group who had not answered any of the questions during the week, had not eagerly participated in the rehearsal of the stories from Scripture, and had not engaged with me after the sessions alongside their peers. I had continually prayed for them each evening when the sessions were over, but I was not sure that the program was making the kind of headway it usually made. These young women had stories of tremendous pain–fathers shot dead in front of them in tribal conflict, young pregnancies as a result of sexual violence, and one girl who was living in a refugee camp in South Sudan having fled the bombing of her city in Sudan just months before. Could these stories and simple activities really have made any difference? On the afternoon we brought the slips of paper–and with them pain, suffering, and sin–to the foot of the cross, my perception of the way that God works was challenged. Girls were invited to give testimony of what God had begun to do in their lives that week. And what do you know? The three girls from my group who gave testimony to the others present, through tears and with thanksgiving to God, were the three girls I had assumed unmoved. God does not always work healing miracles for us to see. Others’ healing, it turned out, was not about me. Us churchy people, perhaps especially leaders, are not always good at remembering that. When any one of us engages in healing, outreach, ministries of mercy–they are not about us. The people we serve will know our intentions very quickly. We need to have the courage to get out of our own way and allow ourselves to become channels of the Spirit. God will work; what is required of us is a humble acknowledgement of the privilege it is to participate. The second thing we do to wrap up the New Hope program is to engage with the passage from Revelation that we read for today: “On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” I’ll never forget the time I led New Hope with an intercultural group of young adult Egyptians, western expats, and Sudanese refugees living in Egypt who, when they acted out this story together, and without prompting, interpreted the line “And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” and began to take imaginary leaves off the tree and pass them to one another. This is indeed the beautiful work that is ours to do. When we begin to heal, by God’s grace, we find the strength of the Spirit enabling us to extend that healing to others. And to recognize that we are part of a global and diverse church is to break down all barriers that existed in that room in Cairo, Egypt, but also in our community here in Hamilton–differences of personality, culture, ethnicity, race, nationality, experience–which led these young people to embrace the eschatological vision of Revelation and pull it into their present. May we too be compelled by this vision, arms outstretched, tree of life leaves in hand, offering friendship and belonging, healing and new life. So as you journey on, go with the blessing of God: May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you: wherever he may send you. May he guide you through the wilderness: protect you through the storm. May he bring you home rejoicing; at the wonders...
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    7 mins
  • Wanting to Believe

    Wanting to Believe
    Jun 17 2025
    “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall. But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me” (Psalm 13). Continuing to work through themes related to suffering and healing in connection with New Hope and hearing stories about our siblings in Christ in the global church, today we are going to talk about lament. In the fifth week of the New Hope program, participants engage with the story of Jesus’ crucifixion, and they hear the words of Christ’s own lament on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus is quoting the beginning of Psalm 22, a lament which would have been well-known by the Jewish onlookers and similar to Psalm 13, our text for today. Lament psalms like these are prevalent in Scripture, particularly in the Psalter. In fact, individual psalms of lament are the most common type of psalm in the Psalter. As we’ve just noted, Jesus himself, in his death on the cross, affirms the centrality of lament to the Christian experience of suffering. And yet, even as the importance of lament is being recovered in some church contexts, we are still often uncomfortable with this practice. John Calvin loved the psalms and wrote a commentary on them, describing the Psalter as an “anatomy of all parts of the soul.” Yet, many churches today continue to be ill-equipped with liturgical resources for the practice of lament. Perhaps this is because lament disrupts the status quo evident in popular modern cultural scripts related to suffering such as “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” or “mind over matter.” In answer, lament psalms give scriptural testimony to the importance of allowing space for deep grief, fear, betrayal, and anger, and inviting God to meet us there. On another note, the language that these lament psalms use, addressing God directly and inviting him into suffering or questioning his role in it, challenge another impulse common in our context–that suffering can only be effectively dealt with through medical or psychological interventions, and that spiritual and religious traditions are only for the seasons that things are going well or for the private lives of individuals, not to be engaged in the public sphere (something the church regrettably and often unintentionally confirms when we fail to engage in lament in corporate worship and allow it to translate into public action for justice). In one New Hope group I led, a training for ministry leaders from around the world who were learning the program so as to be able to pass it along to their own ministry teams, one of the leaders confessed in frustrated tears to the group that they could not engage in the activity for this fifth week of the program. The activity involved writing a lament using four simple prompts: First, “Jesus, these things happened to me…” Second, “Jesus, I am/I feel…” Third, “Jesus, the worst part of this was…” The fourth prompt was the most challenging for the leader because it then makes the same movement that Psalm 13 does in the last couple of verses when it says, “But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me.” The fourth prompt asks participants to finish this statement: “But I believe (or want to believe because I’ve heard this about you) that you are…” This prompt indicates that lament is not an expression of the worshipper’s own experience or personal desires exclusively, but always grounded in God’s character and faithfulness. It’s often the greatest challenge because, in the midst of deep suffering, it is only natural to wonder about who God is and what he is up to. What we came to together as a group of ministry leaders when we discussed our members’ challenge with writing this part of the lament is that this final phrase is not simply tritely hopeful or falsely optimistic. Rather, it is an acknowledgment that the source of our complaint or our pain is something which not only offends and causes us pain, but it is actually an offense to God himself. The Bible’s testimony is that the sin and evil which causes harm to God’s beloved creation, including each of us, is even more painful to God. Thus, lament faithfully insists that God be who God has revealed himself to be. If you’d like to try writing a lament of your own today, I’ll include the prompts in the notes of the podcast. God is not threatened by your complete honesty about your pain. He chose to make known his ...
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    8 mins
  • Go In Peace

    Go In Peace
    Jun 16 2025
    “And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, ‘If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.’ Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ ‘You see the people crowding against you,’ his disciples answered, ‘and yet you can ask, 'Who touched me?’’ But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering’” (Mark 5:25-34). This week, we are continuing to work through themes related to suffering and healing in connection with the New Hope program and hearing stories about our siblings in Christ in the global church. If you haven’t been following along with this series, feel free to look back to last Wednesday’s podcast intro which will provide some context. “Go in peace,” Jesus said to the woman in front of him, “and be freed from your suffering.” I read these last words and look up, and I see the woman’s shoulders shaking with suppressed sobs. The silent tears rolling down the young man’s cheeks. Tears fill my own eyes. God is doing something in this room, and to say anything else, to add anything to Jesus’ own words seems somehow wrong. It is week four of the New Hope program, it’s February of 2024, and I am gathered in a room full of my friends, most of them Sudanese refugees living in Egypt, those forced to flee when the war broke out again in Sudan in April 2023. A war that most of the world had, at this point, largely ignored for the better part of a year. A war which had resulted in more than 150,000 deaths of civilians through a combination of bombings and massacres but also malnutrition and disease resulting from lack of access to basic life necessities. The woman across from me, weeping, had escaped from Sudan and into Egypt the previous spring, having been held at gunpoint by officials, separated from both her older brother and the man she had intended to marry just weeks after the war broke out. The young man with tears running down his face escaped with his aunts, but neither of them have been able to re-establish contact with any other loved ones who remained in Sudan–at least as far as they know–since the beginning of the war. They face discrimination daily in their lives in Cairo, treated as outsiders by most they encounter. The group has just walked through the story of the bleeding woman and her encounter with Jesus through a visualization activity which ends with an invitation for the listener to do as the woman did, to tell Jesus the whole truth. To tell him their story. We paused for silence. Then the words of Jesus, “Daughter, son, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” They hang in the air in the room. “Amin, amin, amin,” a woman’s voice says through tears, as though with the voice of the woman in the story herself, “bashkorak ya rob.” Or, in English, “Amen, amen, amen, thank you God.” In my mind, there isn’t any kind of exegetical work or systematic theology (necessary though those things are) that does a better job of explaining what Jesus does than what happened in that room that day. I think the invitation for us, in reading this story, is much the same as it is for New Hope participants. To walk through the story and allow it, allow Christ, to encounter us as we are. So who are you in the story today? Are you the woman, struggling desperately forward, believing that to touch Jesus will mean your healing? Are you the disciples, skeptical of Jesus’ encounter? Are you in the crowd of onlookers, watching in wonder or judgment? Are you being given the opportunity to, like Jesus, extend belonging and mercy to someone in pain and fear, desperate to believe who he is, desperate for transformation? No matter where you are in the story, it is for you, as are Jesus’ words–to claim as your own and to offer to others: “Daughter, son, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” So as you journey on, go with the blessing of God: May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you: wherever he may send you. May he guide you through the wilderness: protect you through the storm. May he bring you home rejoicing; at the wonders he has shown you. May he bring you home rejoicing once again into our doors.
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    8 mins
  • Removing the Obstacles

    Removing the Obstacles
    Jun 13 2025
    “And it will be said: “Build up, build up, prepare the road! Remove the obstacles out of the way of my people.” For this is what the high and exalted One says— he who lives forever, whose name is holy: “I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. I will not accuse them forever, nor will I always be angry, for then they would faint away because of me— the very people I have created. I was enraged by their sinful greed; I punished them, and hid my face in anger, yet they kept on in their willful ways. I have seen their ways, but I will heal them; I will guide them and restore comfort to Israel’s mourners, creating praise on their lips. Peace, peace, to those far and near,” says the Lord. “And I will heal them.” (Is. 57:14-19). Today, we are continuing to work through themes related to suffering and healing in connection with the New Hope program and hearing stories about our siblings in Christ in the global church. If this is your first devotional this week, and this doesn’t sound familiar, the first few minutes of Wednesday’s episode provide more context. In the third week of the New Hope program, we talk about barriers to our healing and in our relationships with God, others, and ourselves. We read Scripture together and do a drawing activity to demonstrate how we see these barriers. In one group, a young woman sat staring at her paper for the better part of ten minutes as the women around her created detailed images of the barriers they perceived in their own lives. When the time was nearly up, she scribbled down two words and showed them to the group: “sin” and “suffering.” “I can’t figure out where one ends and the other begins,” she said. “What part of my pain is my fault, and what part is other people’s fault. It seems easy for the rest of you to find the line, but I don’t know how.” This young woman had suffered from several addictions and escaped an abusive relationship. She, like so many others in her circumstances, had been shamed by others into blaming herself for what she had experienced. She wondered aloud to her group whether God’s grace was for someone like her. She had left her home country and run far from the source of her pain, but as is true of many in these circumstances, to escape physically is only to have one of many barriers removed. Today’s verses from Isaiah draw us into the situation of the people of Israel post-Babylonian exile. Following closely after chapters which speak hopefully of God’s redemption of his people from their captivity by a foreign empire, the later chapters of Isaiah, including today’s passage, reflect a kind of disappointment among the people. They were free from exile but not experiencing the kind of dramatic restoration they had expected their freedom to bring. They were back in the land of their ancestors, but their holy cities had become a wilderness, and there were serious divisions in the community about pressing ethical issues. They had been forced to recognize the reality of their sin, as well as the persisting effects of the suffering inflicted on them in exile. Like the woman in New Hope, the line between their own responsibility and that of others was blurry. They had moved physically out of captivity, but barriers in relationship with God and others remained. What is God’s response in today’s passage? He reminds them that he lives “in a high and holy place” but that this does not prevent him from being “also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit.” He acknowledges his anger at their sin, but promises healing, guidance, and restoration for mourners. For God, the barriers that his people construct, whether due to their own sin or to protect themselves from the pain inflicted by others, like the young woman in New Hope, are not insurmountable: “Remove the obstacles out of the way of my people,” he commands. To those of us who live with–or watch people we love live with–the lingering effects of sin or suffering, and to those of us for whom the line between them remains indiscernible, causing us to wonder whether God’s grace is wide enough, receive this promise to his people: “I have seen their ways, but I will heal them . . . Peace, peace, to those far and near, says the Lord.” So as you journey on, go with the blessing of God: May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you: wherever he may send you. May he guide you through the wilderness: protect you through the storm. May he bring you home rejoicing; at the wonders he has shown you. May he bring you home rejoicing once again into our doors.
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    7 mins
  • Very Good

    Very Good
    Jun 12 2025

    “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day” (Gen. 1:27-31).

    For those of you who listened to yesterday’s reflection, you will recall that Pastor Michael is away for the week, and so we are going to take a break from our progress through Philippians. For a few days, I’m going to walk us through a week of devotional reflections based on themes of a program called New Hope, which I participated in and led during my time serving in Egypt and South Sudan. If you didn’t get the chance to listen yesterday, I invite you to go back and listen to the first couple of minutes to get a sense of what the program is and how it will shape this week’s installments of Wilderness Wanderings.

    The first time I led the New Hope program was with a group of Egyptian women and girls. About half the group were employees of a non-profit serving unhoused children and youth; the other half were unhoused youth themselves. In particular, in this group, were several young girls who were teenage mothers. In an honour-shame culture like Egypt, a teen pregnancy has impacts often beyond what we can imagine in a western context. These girls did not have any family support system, lived in a shelter (one of just two I am aware of in the whole city), and were cared for by non-profit staff.

    In week two of the New Hope program, we read the story of creation together, including today’s verses, and reflect on what the story tells us about God and about us. The three things about today’s verses which resonated most with the young women in the group were the fact that they are created in God’s image, that God gave them a task–to be fruitful and to rule, and that God called all that he created good. One of the girls, through tears, remarked that she found hope in God seeing everything he had made and calling it very good: “That,” she said, “is very different from the way that everyone else sees me and my baby. Is it really how God sees us?”

    The verses we are looking at today are known in our tradition as the “cultural mandate,” humanity’s God-given vocation at the time of creation. It might seem curious to some of us to start here. I’ve said I’ll be taking us through a series on suffering and healing, and at the point these words enter the story of God, there is no suffering and thus no need for healing. But that’s exactly why we need to start here.

    Just as the girls recognized so poignantly, the cultural mandate reveals how God sees all of us, all of his creation. Before we can talk about the corrupting forces of evil which cause suffering, we need to understand God’s intention for creation. Before we talk about healing, we need to understand humanity’s telos, the way in which we were created and what we were created for. Only then can we discern the reason that suffering impacts us in the way it does and, ultimately, the end to which our healing is meant to bring us: As the girls recognized, to the dignity of identity with the Creator, and the empowerment to participate as co-creators of life in all its forms.

    So as you journey on, go with the blessing of God:

    May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you: wherever he may send you. May he guide you through the wilderness: protect you through the storm. May he bring you home rejoicing; at the wonders he has shown you. May he bring you home rejoicing once again into our doors.
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    6 mins
  • For Me and For Many

    For Me and For Many
    Jun 11 2025
    While Pastor Michael is away for the week, we are going to take a break from our progress through Philippians, and I’m going to walk us through a week of devotional reflections based on a program that I participated in and led five times during my time in Egypt and (briefly) in South Sudan. Just for today, our reflection is going to be a little bit longer than usual so I can provide some context for this. The program is called New Hope, and it was developed by a team of licensed clinical psychologists and counsellors, church planters, and resource specialists in teaching Scripture in oral cultures, focused on multiplying healing in suffering communities. Rather than taking us through the entirety of the program (not possible in short reflections like these) I am going to lead us thematically through elements of it, focusing on key Scriptures which illustrate the themes, and sharing with you brief stories of the ways that I witnessed healing through them. I trust that as we daily encounter Scripture and the stories of our siblings in Christ in the global church, we will experience the Holy Spirit drawing connections between their stories, our own stories, and God’s great story, directing our attention to the way that our God works through his word and his church to multiply healing for the sake of his kingdom. Our text for today is from Gen. 45:4-8: “Then Joseph said to his brothers, ‘Come close to me.’ When they had done so, he said, ‘I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will be no plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt’” (Gen. 45:4-8). These verses come from the end of the story that groups tell together in the first week of New Hope, the story of Joseph–favoured son of Jacob, who is sold into slavery by his brothers, accused of sexually assaulting his first master’s wife, sent to jail, interprets dreams for the king of Egypt and his servants, and is eventually released and put in charge of years of plenty and famine in the land of Egypt and its surrounding regions. Here at the end of the story, Joseph, second in command over all of Egypt, makes himself known to his brothers, who have appeared before him without recognition to receive food during the famine. It is a remarkable ending to a complicated story full of suffering in many forms. This part of the Joseph story also provides the vision statement for the New Hope program, a paraphrased version of the words we have just heard Joseph speak to his brothers upon the revelation that he is still alive. The goal for New Hope participants is that they would be able to come to terms with their suffering in such a way that they can truthfully say with Joseph, “Do not be afraid. You meant to harm me. But God has used what has happened for good. Not just for me, but so that many other people can be saved.” Like Joseph himself at the beginning of this narrative, most people beginning the New Hope program are highly skeptical about the truth of Joseph’s words to his brothers. Perhaps, in the midst of your own suffering, you are too. “Don’t be afraid,” (or don’t be distressed, in the version we read today), is how Joseph begins. Well, that’s already quite something. It’s the most frequently given command in Scripture, and perhaps it has been a comfort to you in seasons of suffering. But for others, maybe it just feels like an extra burden for an already difficult season. If you look closely at the contexts this command is given in Scripture, it quickly becomes apparent that this is one of God’s instructions which is not necessarily meant to logically cohere with the circumstances in which it is given. For example, it is offered to the Israelites at the shore of the Red Sea, while Pharaoh’s army is hot on their tail, by Jesus to Jairus when he comes to him with his daughter on the brink of death, and by Peter in his letter to churches scattered throughout Asia Minor and facing intense persecution. All of these people have good reason to be afraid, and the command is not a judgment of their fear, but an expression of God’s heart for his people–that he does not desire their fear nor the circumstances that cause it. Thus, with this command, suffering individuals or communities are invited to witness in hope to something that is beyond their immediate reality. The command “do not be afraid” is not all that Joseph says. He goes on to insist not only that it was God, and not his brothers, who sent him to Egypt, but that he did so for the ...
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