St. John's is decorated!

Here are a few views of the festival decorations at St. John's for Christmas 2011:



the main Christmas Tree in the sanctuary



Some of the wonderful decorations on the tree,
some of which haven't been seen in a while.



The creche in the sanctuary, crocheted by the pastor's wife, Beth.




The three magi with gold, frankinsense, myrrh, and camel, the holy family,
ox and ass, shepherd and sheep, angel on high with bird, and a few visitors.
(Francis of Assisi on the left - he started the creche devotion; Martin
Luther on the right in black - he wrote many beloved Christmas hymns;
"Chrismoose" on the right - a must for Canada; die Weihnachtsmaus
{the Christmas Mouse- who's blamed for everything, I've been told} in the
foreground.)




Joseph, Jesus, and Mary in detail.




The Pastor's 'Chrismon' tree in the fellowship hall. Each
ornament is a symbol for Jesus, hence "Christ Monogram"
or Chrismon.



























I hope to see you at one of our Christmas services this weekend! If your health or travel keeps you away, God be with you where-ever you might be!

The Pastor’s Sermon, Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 18, 2011

Sunday's readings:  2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16

                            Romans 16:25-27

                            Luke 1:26-38

Disclaimer: At the request of a few of the congregation, I’m ‘publishing’ the text of my sermon ‘as written.’ I cannot guarantee that I will deliver the sermon ‘as written.’

 Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’

• We'd all agree, I think, that Mary's response took a lot of faith. What would we do if we were faced with a similar situation? Would our faith be strong enough to answer as she did?
• We may never know. It's obvious that Mary's response to the angel's news took faith. To hear that you were to be the mother of a man who would be a prophet and more than a prophet, the saviour and the Son of God would be amazing and any of us could understand what sort of faith Mary must have had. Still it could be that the next morning might have taken even more faith. And the morning after that.
• To tell Joseph, her intended, about her situation would have taken faith.
• To be a pregnant woman dealing with day-to-day life in her time would have taken courage and faith. Remember she was found to be pregnant before she was married.
• To meet with and deal with her family while in her pregnant state and to hear Elizabeth's words about what her child was to be would take faith.
• In this, Mary remains a model of faith for us. She trusted and believed that what the angel said would happen would indeed happen. For her, faith would be a daily thing, as close to her as the life growing within her. She might be astounded and amazed, distressed and troubled, in fear or in pain for her son. And still she trusted. We know the life of Jesus and we also know that Mary watched and trusted all through her son's life. She was also present at the earliest events in the history of the church, as the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles attests.
• For all of us here today, faith goes far beyond the first flush of believing or the joy of festivals. When those things come into our lives, they are a great joy and a comfort to us. They are worth remembering and holding on to. It becomes a problem when a person decided to live in that moment and not continue their journey. Our lives are meant to be lived; that really is God's will for us, the reason he created us.
• Faith then becomes a daily response to all God gives us, to what the day brings. Faith is not something saved for special occasions or for times of disaster. We may pray and worship in a particular way at those times, and faith goes beyond that.
• Faith is what inspires and forms our every waking moment, sets and resets our values, and to a great extent, makes us who we are.
• Mary carried Jesus within her. Even after his birth, she would be constantly reminded of what her faith-filled response meant to her and led to. Because of her response - “let it be with me according to your word.” - the great story of salvation continued. When you think about it, she could have said “No.” She said “Yes” and trusted not only that Gabriel's words would be true, but also that God's grace would sustain her in the days following. She might not have understood all that the interchange with Gabriel would bring, but she trusted that God would see her through all that would come. I think we can say that her faith was renewed each and every day and even if she had days of confusion and days where she remained “perplexed” about all that was occurring, faith in God's grace and presence would see her through.
• In this, Mary, the mother of Jesus, and each of us are alike. We may experience confusion and dismay and even questioning in our lives of faith, but remember Mary asked a question as well. Despite the seeming impossibility of what the angel proclaimed to her, she continued to believe and to live as she believed, day after day, through the confusing, terrifying, and gloriously astounding events of Jesus' life and the life of the church, right to the end of her own life.
• That's what we are called to do as well. To live our lives in faith and in God's grace, responding to God's lead through confusion and doubt, saying “let it be with me according to your word.” as Mary did, trusting God, knowing that the angel has assured us as well that “...nothing will be impossible with God.’ ”

Christmas is coming!

The old rhyme says "Christmas is a-comin' and the geese are gettin' fat." No geese at St. John's this year. Still as pastor, I want to 'publish' the times of our Christmas services.

Christmas Eve, Saturday, December 24  --  6:30pm -- A "Family Service" including Holy Communion. The service is unique and focused more for younger folks. The service will include the Sunday School presentation, called "Our Christmas Tree", which will be our sermon. Holy Communion will be celebrated and, with an eye to time, we will distribute Communion by "continual Communion" in the main aisle. (St. John's Church does this at the Family service ONLY.) Battery-powered candles will be available for younger folks who shouldn't really be handling a real candle. Silent Night/Stille Nacht will be sung by candlelight in both English and German.

Christmas Eve, Saturday, December 24  --  8:00pm -- A "traditional" service of Holy Communion. Pr. John will preach and we will include St. John's traditional candlelight singing of Silent Night/Stille Nacht in both English and German.

Christmas Day, Sunday, December 25 -- 10:30am -- Since Christmas Day falls on a Sunday this year, Pastor John insisted on celebrating a service. Holy Communion will be offered to all who attend, but the form of the service is undecided at this time. I don't know how many people will attend, nor do I know if we will have musicians. The service will be more quiet and meditative.

New Year's Day, Sunday, January 1, 2012  --  10:30am -- A service of Holy Communion will be celebrated to start the new year. Again the style of the service is undecided, but there will be a worship service.

I'd like to invite all who read this to join us at St. John's to celebrate the wonderous gift of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ and to dedicate the new year to worship and service. I hope to see you there.

The Pastor's Sermon for December 11, 2011 - the Third Sunday in Advent

(I intend to 'publish' my sermons on this site. Some folks can't always make it to the worship services but can access this site, so here goes.)

The readings: Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

                        1 Thessalonians 5:16-24

                        John 2:6-8, 19-28

"I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal."

• In the Gospel of John, the story of John the Baptizer is interwoven with the hymn (there's no better word for it) about Jesus' pre-existence. For the Gospel writer, the beginning of the ministry of Jesus is yoked to his eternal place in and with God.
• The Baptizer is quite adamant about about who he is and who he is not. He is also quite clear about his mission, that is to be the voice in the wilderness and to baptize.
• To the authorities sent to question him, his baptism is a mystery. If he is neither Elijah nor the prophet nor the Messiah, why is he baptizing? Baptism for the Jewish people of Jesus time had a specific meaning. Those who were becoming Jewish were baptized. However, John was baptizing Jewish people and calling them to repent of their past and make a new future. His baptism in the Jordan was to make a new start, symbolically cleansed those baptized from their sins.
• John is also very clear that his baptism is not the ultimate. In the other three Gospels and a few verses further in John's Gospel, the Baptizer says that the one who will come after him will baptize with the Holy Spirit and not simple water.
• John refers to the one who will follow him as “One whom you do not know...” This appears to be a consistent theme for John's Gospel. People don't always recognize who Jesus is. One of the best examples is the so-called man born blind whom Jesus heals with a paste of mud on the man's eyes. Pilate in his questioning of Jesus is another example. There is a constant theme of discovering just who Jesus is by all around him, including his disciples. For John, the mystery of Jesus often leads to deliberate non-recognition and even rejection. For the other Gospels, it more of what is called the Messianic Secret. It is as if Jesus tells his followers “This is who I am; don't tell anyone.”
• Now, doesn't it make you wonder? Would we know Jesus if we saw him? Were he to walk through the church door right this minute, how would we recognize him and how would we respond? There doesn't seem to have been any specific marker for him during his lifetime. He dressed and spoke as a man of his own time and place. There were disputed signs, true. But only those who believed and those who had been touched by him in some way would recognize him.
• So, how would we know it was him?
• Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal. Well, maybe we wouldn't know him. Maybe he wouldn't look any different than that person next to you.
• And there is exactly the point. In this season of preparation, when we are told by the church's readings to watch and to wait, just as the prophets counseled the Israelites, we look for both the celebration of the entry of Jesus Christ into our world and for his return, to fully reconcile all things in himself.
• We hold fast to the belief that Jesus has come and is still to come. In the meantime, we search for his presence here and now. He has promised to be with us ...always, to the end of the age.’ (Matthew 28:20) and there is no reason to doubt his word.
• Where can Jesus' presence be found in this time between? His presence can be found in his Word and in the Sacraments; the church has long proclaimed that. His presence can also be found in the community of the church, in our fellow disciples. That way is sometimes forgotten. Even more often forgotten is finding Christ in the needy around us. This is not always pleasant or even satisfying, but it is real.
• Once again, the music of the season reminds us of this. This song, although not a carol, hymn, or spiritual song per se does have a lot to tell us about living out the season and its meaning. It's called The Mystery of Christmas, composed in 1959 by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen for a singer named Harry Crosby, better know as “Bing” Crosby. Again, I won't sing it, but the words go like this:

It's not the glow you feel, when snow appears
It's not the Christmas card,

you've sent for years
Not the joyful sound, when sleigh bells ring
Or the merry songs children sing
...the little gift you send, on Christmas day
Will not bring back the friend you turned away
So may I suggest, the secret of Christmas
It's not the things you do, at Christmas time
But the Christmas things you do

all year through.

• For a note written somewhat earlier in time, we turn to Luther's 1520 work, The Freedom of a Christian, where he wrote, “[A]s our heavenly Father has in Christ freely come to our aid, we also ought freely to help our neighbor through our body and its works, and each one should become as it were a Christ to the other that we may be Christs to one another and Christ may be the same in all, that is, that we may be truly Christians...”
• Our eyes may not see Christ in “the least” of Christ's sisters and brothers, but here the eye of faith see more truly than the eye of mind or body. Although not always known, Christ is with us... always, always, always.

Welcome!

In an attempt to help people be aware of our presence in Aylmer and all over, this is one way to have a "web presence" as it were. With that in mind, welcome to St. John's in Aylmer!

We are a small Evangelical Lutheran congregation formed in 1947 and still going. Originally formed from Lutheran families of Lithuanian German descent and later joined by new arrivals from the German settlements in Transylvania (Siebenburgen), the congregation is now made up of people of all ages and backgrounds. It's good that way.

We worship on Sundays at 10:30 am, celebrating Holy Communion on the first and third Sunday and festivals. Sunday School for young folks is held at the same time.

Preparations are in place for the celebration of Christmas, the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Services will be held on Christmas Eve, Saturday, December 24th with a "Family Service" at 6:30pm (including Holy Communion) and a more traditional service of Holy Communion at 8:00pm. On Christmas Day, Sunday, December 25th, there will be a 'quieter' celebration on Holy Communion at 10:30am. Everyone is invited, but you, dear reader, are especially welcome.