Isaiah 53:5, Matthew 9:10-12, Micah 6:8, 1 Corinthians 12:8-10: HMCS Merciful: Stone Catcher Cruise.

 Presented to TSA Alberni Valley, 30 August 2025 by Major Michel Ramsay

 

 My parents took Susan, our kids and I on an Alaska cruise to celebrate their 60^th anniversary. It was great. We were able to see wonderful scenery in Glacier National Park and elsewhere. We were able to see whales – so many whales – and other wildlife. It was good celebrating with family. It was fun to do the activities on ship and explore Juneau, Skagway, and Ketchikan. The girls and I really enjoyed the trivia – especially music trivia - nights. We even won two of the contests and received plastic tulips as a prize! Heather and I were able to be part of a show in Skagway where they invited us up on stage. We also met some very interesting people – One lunch I sat with a lady from Japan who studied at Regent College in Vancouver and is currently working on her PHD on Malachi – she spent 10 years translating Bibles in Uzbekistan. It was certainly providential to have her sitting next to me at lunch one day. She told me how one of the Bible translators working with her, an Uzbek, was not a Christian. They weren’t allowed to proselytize; however, during their time immersing themselves in the Bible; he gave his life to the Lord.

 

Many things from this trip could be possible sermons. The beauty of nature and creation is always a good theme. And launching from the testimony of the Bible translator, one could easily speak about Doctrine One of The Salvation Army (We believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were given by inspiration of God, and that they only constitute the Divine rule of Christian faith and practice) or Romans 1:16: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes..."

 

One thing that is a natural analogy is the nature of cruises in general. There are so many people on the trip from all over the world. I met people from Germany, Japan, Columbia, Philippines, South Africa, the UK, the US and elsewhere. People were from different walks of life and different ages. This reminded me of the Kingdom of Heaven and how, Galatians 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

 

I was also reminded that as is pointed out in Ecclesiastes 9:2-3: 

 “All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not.

As it is with the good,

so with the sinful;

as it is with those who take oaths,

so with those who are afraid to take them.

This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun:

The same destiny overtakes all.”

 

It doesn’t matter what people do on the cruise – there were more activities than one could possibly do even if they wanted to do them all. Some people could have spent the whole time in their rooms; some people could have gone on every shore excursion - dog sleds, helicopters, hikes – or visited every museum or saw every show. Some people could have eaten and drank so much that they couldn’t move whereas others could have spent their time doing abs workouts and Tai Chi. I could easily make the point that this is what life is like. We all board the cruise ship of our life and we are all going to get off – the revivalist would then ask us this question, when your temporal cruise ends, what will your eternal destination be? This is important. I myself am drawn to holiness / social justice themes these days; concentrating on what you do while you are on the cruise of life rather than where you will exit the ship because I truly believe that Salvation is a relationship (with God) rather than merely a final destination.

 

About that: I have shared with you this summer many books I have been reading: about Truth and Reconciliation, and prison reform and other social justice issues. If I have gone overboard (pun acknowledged) I do apologize. I do believe that we are called to live holy lives serving God, showing love, mercy to our neighbour. One book I have been reading is ‘Just Mercy’ by Bryan Stevenson, a death row lawyer who helps people who can’t afford lawyers in the USA. He shared a number of stories about his clients: some guilty, some innocent; Some who were spared execution; some who weren’t. I read stories of children who lived 40 years in prison to finally have their sentence overturned and be released. There is one amazing story of Walter, who was wrongfully committed and was almost executed but they were able to save him. There were also hair-raising stories of people who could prove they were innocent but were still executed. There was one story of a man who never matured beyond the equivalent of a young child who was convicted of murder and spent most of his years in prison in solitary confinement and who truly believed that when/if he was released, he would go to live with his lawyer. One execution, that of Mr. Dill, hit the author, his lawyer, quite hard… (288-289)

On the phone with Mr. Dill, I thought about all of his struggles and all the terrible things he’d gone through and how his disabilities had broken him. There was no excuse for him to have shot someone, but it didn’t make sense to kill him. I began to get angry about it. Why do we want to kill all the broken people? What is wrong with us, that we think a thing like that can be right? I tried not to let Mr. Dill hear me crying. I tried not to show him that he was breaking my heart. He finally got his words out. “Mr. Bryan, I just want to thank you for fighting for me. I thank you for caring about me. I love y’all for trying to save me.”

 

This next part really resonates with me in my role as a Salvation Army Officer. I truly feel sometimes as the Mr. Stevenson writes:

When I hung up the phone that night I had a wet face and a broken heart. The lack of compassion I witnessed every day had finally exhausted me. I looked around my crowded office, at the stacks of records and papers, each pile filled with tragic stories, and I suddenly didn’t want to be surrounded by all this anguish and misery. As I sat there, I thought myself a fool for having tried to fix situations that were so fatally broken. It’s time to stop. I can’t do this anymore.

For the first time I realized that my life was just full of brokenness. I worked in a broken system of justice. My clients were broken by mental illness, poverty, and racism. They were torn apart by disease, drugs and alcohol, pride, fear, and anger. I thought of Joe Sullivan and of Trina, Antonio, Ian, and dozens of other broken children we worked with, struggling to survive in prison. I thought of people broken by war, like Herbert Richardson; people broken by poverty, like Marsha Colbey; people broken by disability, like Avery Jenkins. In their broken state, they were judged and condemned by people whose commitment to fairness had been broken by cynicism, hopelessness, and prejudice.

I looked at my computer and at the calendar on the wall. I looked again around my office at the stacks of files. I saw the list of our staff.... And before I knew it, I was talking to myself aloud: “I can just leave. Why am I doing this?”

It took me a while to sort it out, but I realized something sitting there while Jimmy Dill was being killed at Holman prison. After working for more than twenty-five years, I understood that I don’t do what I do because it’s required or necessary or important. I don’t do it because I have no choice. I do what I do because I’m broken, too.

My years of struggling against inequality, abusive power, poverty, oppression, and injustice had finally revealed something to me about myself. Being close to suffering, death, executions, and cruel punishments didn’t just illuminate the brokenness of others; in a moment of anguish and heartbreak, it also exposed my own brokenness. You can’t effectively fight abusive power, poverty, inequality, illness, oppression, or injustice and not be broken by it.

We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent. I desperately wanted mercy for Jimmy Dill and would have done anything to create justice for him, but I couldn’t pretend that his struggle was disconnected from my own. The ways in which I have been hurt—and have hurt others—are different from the ways Jimmy Dill suffered and caused suffering. But our shared brokenness connected us.

… We have a choice. We can embrace our humanness, which means embracing our broken natures and the compassion that remains our best hope for healing. Or we can deny our brokenness, forswear compassion, and, as a result, deny our own humanity.

I thought of the guards strapping Jimmy Dill to the gurney that very hour. I thought of the people who would cheer his death and see it as some kind of victory. I realized they were broken people, too, even if they would never admit it. So many of us have become afraid and angry. We’ve become so fearful and vengeful that we’ve thrown away children, discarded the disabled, and sanctioned the imprisonment of the sick and the weak—not because they are a threat to public safety or beyond rehabilitation but because we think it makes us seem tough, less broken. I thought of the victims of violent crime and the survivors of murdered loved ones, and how we’ve pressured them to recycle their pain and anguish and give it back to the offenders we prosecute. I thought of the many ways we’ve legalized vengeful and cruel punishments, how we’ve allowed our victimization to justify the victimization of others. We’ve submitted to the harsh instinct to crush those among us whose brokenness is most visible.

But simply punishing the broken—walking away from them or hiding them from sight—only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity.

 

Like me, Mr. Stevenson says:

I frequently had difficult conversations with clients who were struggling and despairing over their situations—over the things they’d done, or had been done to them, that had led them to painful moments. Whenever things got really bad, and they were questioning the value of their lives, I would remind them that each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. I told them that if someone tells a lie, that person is not just a liar. If you take something that doesn’t belong to you, you are not just a thief. Even if you kill someone, you’re not just a killer. I told myself that evening what I had been telling my clients for years. I am more than broken. In fact, there is a strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy. When you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You see things you can’t otherwise see; you hear things you can’t otherwise hear. You begin to recognize the humanity that resides in each of us.

All of sudden, I felt stronger. I began thinking about what would happen if we all just acknowledged our brokenness, if we owned up to our weaknesses, our deficits, our biases, our fears. Maybe if we did, we wouldn’t want to kill the broken among us who have killed others. Maybe we would look harder for solutions to caring for the disabled, the abused, the neglected, and the traumatized. I had a notion that if we acknowledged our brokenness, we could no longer take pride in mass incarceration, in executing people, in our deliberate indifference to the most vulnerable.

 

My friends, I almost wept as I read all of this; because this is what my life as a Salvation Army Officer often feels like. I see so many people broken, needing mercy, and it makes me cry when we as a society, or I, as a person, don’t offer it.

 

I read one part in this book where Mr. Stevenson’s client was being released after many years of wrongful imprisonment and he said he should have felt happy – but he felt angry that Walter, his client, had to suffer for many years and even though he was released, his years can never be returned to him. My heart was in my throat. I have felt that anger on behalf of our friends here and at the Bread of Life as they receive justice delayed, knowing many will not even experience that. I have like Mr. Stevenson felt I wanted to quit some days.

 

He tells another story. This one is about a lady he encountered in a courtroom. The first time she was ever in court was after her young grandson, whom she loved more than anything else, was murdered. Mrs. Macmillan prayed to the Lord repeatedly. She sat through the whole trial of the three young men convicted of killing her son. When they were sentenced to die in prison, she cried. A lady came to comfort her asking which one of the convicted boys she was related to – none, the victim. They sat together for two hours in silence. Mrs. Macmillan then began coming regularly to court. She said,

          “It has been wonderful, Bryan. When I first came, I’d look for people who had lost someone to murder or some violent crime. Then it got to the point where some of the ones grieving the most were the ones whose children or parents were on trial, so I just started letting anybody lean on me who needed it. All these young children being sent to prison forever, all this grief and violence. Those judges throwing people away like they’re not even human, people shooting each other, hurting each other like they don’t care. I don’t know, it’s a lot of pain. I decided that I was supposed to be here to catch some of the stones people cast at each other.”

 

She is referencing the woman caught in adultery and how the Lord required that they let the woman go. Mr. Stevenson said to a congregation once, “But today, our self-righteousness, our fear, and our anger have caused even the Christians to hurl stones at the people who fall down, even when we know we should forgive or show compassion…we can’t simply watch that happen…. we have to be stone-catchers.” Mrs. Macmillan doesn’t have the power of the Lord or the judges to release people but she can catch the stones we throw at each other. We can all do that. We are all called to do that.

 

Mr. Stevenson recalls again the night his friend was killed:

 

On the drive home, I turned on the car radio, seeking news about Mr. Dill’s execution. I found a station airing a news report. It was a local religious station, but in their news broadcast there was no mention of the execution. I left the station on, and before long a preacher began a sermon. She started with scripture (1 Corinthians 12:8-10).

 

Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. Each time he said, “My grace is sufficient. My power is made perfect in your weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may work through me. Since I know it is all for Christ’s good, I am quite content with my weaknesses and with insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

 

I turned off the radio station, and as I slowly made my way home, I understood that even as we are caught in a web of hurt and brokenness, we’re also in a web of healing and mercy. I thought of the little boy who hugged me outside of church, creating reconciliation and love. I didn’t deserve reconciliation or love in that moment, but that’s how mercy works. The power of just mercy is that it belongs to the undeserving. It’s when mercy is least expected that it’s most potent—strong enough to break the cycle of victimization and victimhood, retribution and suffering. It has the power to heal the psychic harm and injuries that lead to aggression and violence, abuse of power, mass incarceration.

 

Today, I confess to you that this is a burden on my heart. I feel for all our employees who are struggling with addiction, mental illness, and trauma; my friends who steal from our Thrift Store to feed their addiction. Our folk at the Bread of Life and The Salvation Army shelter who have left us to go to prison, the hospital or the funeral home. My heart breaks for the many people struggling whom I know personally and who we live and work alongside everyday. I just hope that I will always remember to extend the mercy that I know that I don’t even deserve to everyone I meet. After all, we are called to be stone-catchers. It is my prayer that we will all do just that and show just mercy.

 

Let us pray.

4 Categories and 12 Steps to Holiness.

Presented to TSA Alberni Valley Ministries, 27 July 2025 by Major M Ramsay

 

The previous few weeks I have been camping with Susan and Heather – and coming back here to work: some weeks I was more with them such as last week and some weeks I was more at work here such the week previous.

 

The themes I have been preaching on lately are what I have been reading about the past few weeks: forgiveness and the Kingdom of God. I have been reading a few books and articles by and about Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He shares some examples about the power one has when they forgive. You can even be free of awful hurts – pain from murder, torture, racism, etc. – by forgiving people who harmed you. Forgiveness can save your mental, emotional and spiritual health.

 

Last week was also one of my favourite recent sermons; I was reading a lot of liberation theologians so I shared some of my ideas of the Kingdom of God – where there are no more wars, no more prisons; where countries take the resources we currently spend on killing other people’s children and use them to save our own and other children instead.

 

This week I have been reading a lot about Alcoholic Anonymous’ 12 steps so I will speak about that. I have often left AA meetings realizing how good a vehicle they are for the gospel and have often quoted them in various sermons.

 

This week I noticed that I could arrange the 12 steps of AA into 4 categories of Salvation; so I will share these and  the12 steps as they relate to Holiness, as I understand them:

 

Category 1 - Steps 1-3: the Sovereignty of God (Jonah 1)

1.     We admitted we were powerless over [sin] — that our lives had become unmanageable.

2.     We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us…

3.     We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

 

I want to share a bit of a miracle related to Category 1, the sovereignty of God – my phone stopped charging on Monday (I need it for work, for a lot); I was camping last week ¾ of an hour west of Langford, past Sooke. I drove a long way to lot of places to see if I could get a tech to help me. I couldn’t. I needed my phone at least for an alarm clock as I had to get up at 3 or 4am Wednesday morning to get here for work. When God placed preaching about  ‘His sovereignty’ on my mind, I prayed for the sovereign God to charge my phone so at least I would have an alarm on Wednesday – and He did! And then it stopped charging again. God does all kinds of big, little and other miracles for His Kingdom and His purposes. (He also used others here to fix my phone on Wednesday too. God is good.)

 

When I think of the sovereignty of God I think of Jonah. We know the story of Jonah. Jonah knows that God can save people from destruction; God asks Jonah to tell Jonah’s enemies how to be saved from destruction – Jonah says ‘no’. Not only that. Jonah says, ‘I am outta here’. God tells Jonah to go to an inland city like Saskatoon or Red Dear and tell them how they can be saved; so, Jonah hops the first boat to Japan. The actual city is Ninevah, in modern day Iraq, and Jonah heads to the Mediterranean Sea, but you get the point. Jonah knows God is sovereign, but Jonah made the mistake of thinking he could thwart that somehow.

 

God then proves He is in charge, of course. When Jonah hops on a boat to run away, God sends a storm and all the people on the boat believe they are going to die; they ask their gods and each other why this is happening; they find out that it is Jonah’s fault; they ask Jonah what to do so that the storm will end; Jonah says ‘kill me’ – really!?! Jonah would rather die that do what God wants him to do. Eventually they do throw him overboard, the storm stops and the other people on the boat are saved; everyone worships God.

 

But of course, God didn’t let Jonah off the hook by letting him die. Much to Jonah’s dismay God sent a big fish to swallow Jonah, keep him from the storm for three days. The fish then vomits him on shore and God says [more or less], ‘Jonah now go and do what I told you to do in the first place’. God is sovereign.

 

Step 2: Restoration - Jonah begrudgingly does it, God restores the whole city of Ninevah – nothing is impossible for God

 

Step 3: Turning our will over to God – Jonah never really reaches this stage- Jonah winds up whining and complaining under a branch the Lord gave him; the Lord then took the branch away – and Jonah complained all the more.

 

Better examples of turning our will over to God, repentance, is Terah and Abraham’s family. Terah is Abraham’s dad. They are called by God, in turn, to move to Canaan from Babbel. We remember that story. The people of the earth think they are better than God or at least equal to Him – they don’t even have the understanding of the sovereignty of God that Jonah does. God had told the people to disperse, go and fill the whole earth in Genesis 1 but they decide that they would rather challenge God, stay and build this tower to the heavens and make a name for themselves instead of following God’s direction… God then says, (I’m paraphrasing) challenge accepted. He knows that they cause all these problems working together because they are speaking the same language; so, He confuses their languages – He makes them speak a whole bunch of different languages and since they can’t understand each other the people go to the different areas of the earth like they were told too. Abraham’s family was called to Canaan. Terah, his dad, looks like he started that journey and then gave up. But Abraham repented, turned His will over to God and continued.

 

An even better example is Saul in the NT. He persecuted God’s people: Christians and Greeks (Gentiles). God then strikes him blind while travelling the road to Damascus and God winds up using him as one of the main Christian ministers to the Greeks (Gentiles); as a result of his turning his will over to God, in history we remember him by the Greek version of his name, ‘Paul’, rather than the Hebrew version of his name ‘Saul’

 

Category 2 - Steps 4-7: Confess Our Shortcomings (Galatians 5:19-21)

4.     We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5.     Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6.     Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7.     Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

 

About a month ago of so we preached a number of sermons on Galatians 5 and the fruit of the Spirit vs. the fruit of ourselves, the flesh. During one of those sermons, I told Gerry Fostaty’s story from As You Were: The Tragedy at Valcartier. I will summarize it here:

 

Gerry was a cadet leader at camp. As part of the camp, the young children he led learned how to use weapons properly and how to take care of the weapons and how the weapons worked and all kinds of things like that.

          In one class, the adult instructor was handing out dummy grenades for the children to examine. The dummy grenades are different from the real grenades: the dummies are brightly coloured - orange, pink, blue – not the military green of combat weaponry. The cadets, these children were encouraged to take apart these dummy grenades, put them back together, examine how they work, etc., etc., etc.…

Apparently and disastrously in with the orange, pink, and blue-coloured grenades was at least one live green grenade. The children were passing this live green grenade – along with the toy grenades – along the line of cadets in the class. They were taking the pin out and placing it back in and they were holding (I don’t know what the term is but…) the safety and disabling and reassembling it along with the coloured grenades and then… one little boy pulled the pin on the live grenade and holding it out too long…

One deadly green grenade had mixed in with the harmless coloured grenades and this one green grenade brought death and destruction with it. The result of this green grenade in the room full of children is essentially the same result as hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissentions, factions, envy, and other defects of character wind up in our lives.

 

Therefore, we need to make a moral inventory – we need to find those and other green grenades in our life. We need to point them out to God and someone else. God knows but He likes us to tell Him when we figure things out – because He loves us. We need to realize that we can’t actually get rid of all of these green grenades by ourselves – if we try, they may blow up in any of a myriad of ways. We need to ask God to get rid of the grenades because He really is the only one who can safely do that.

 

Category 3 - Steps 8-11: Keep us Blameless (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24)

8. We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

 

Who here has never hurt people? Who here has never made anyone mad at you? I could at this point hand out papers and pens or pencils and ask you to make a list of all the people you have hurt – but we probably don’t have enough time. I probably couldn’t get past Grade 2 by the time our time is up today. (Romans 3:23: for we all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God)

 

Step 9. Make amends where we can – this is important: if you stole 1 million dollars, if you have some way to pay it back, do it. If you don’t’, you can’t. Also, it is suggested that you don’t throw anyone else under the bus. If you robbed a bank or stole from work, you might or might not want to rat out your accomplices and the security guard who was asleep at the desk – but that may cause more harm than good. You would have to figure that out. Adultery is often mentioned here in the literature – if you slept with a married person’s spouse – and it is still unknown years later; you probably don’t want to surprise the spouse and ruin a reconciled marriage just so you can feel good. That would be selfish. Basic rule of thumb: don’t let fear be an excuse to not make amends – always stand up to your fears. But some people get such a high out of confession that they wind up outing other people in the process – this is bad. Don’t make other people’s lives worse so you can feel good.

 

Steps 10 and 11: keep it up! Make a moral inventory (step 4) and keep on making moral inventories. See where those green grenades are. We will each probably make mistakes in the future too. Let us be aware of that and let us confess our sins -mistakes, shortcomings – as they happen. John Wesley did this daily. We should do the same: set up times of prayer, meditation and reflection and confess our mistakes to others, ourselves, and God. Personal devotional time, connecting with God is so important. It is the only way we can ever fully have peace in our lives.

 

Category 4 - Step 12: Evangelize (Matthew 28:18-20)

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to [others], and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

 

That is our final step and the last category – Evangelize. I will teach you some Greek. εὐαγγέλιον (euangelion) evangelism is the Greek word for ‘Good News’. Evangelism means ‘good news’: When you share good news with some one you are evangelizing them. This is what the word means and that is what it is meant to be. We can be saved from so much here and now and forever: that’s what salvation is; we can share that good news with others: that’s what evangelism is.

 

So today we went through the 12 AA steps, applied them to holiness and organized them into four categories of Salvation. The categories are:

 

Step One: Let us acknowledge the sovereignty of God

Two: Confess our shortcomings

Three: Let God keep us blameless

Four: Evangelise, share the Good News

 

That is my hope. That we will all experience this Holiness, this peace with God as we live out our Salvation both now and forever – and then that we will share the Good News of that possibility and that reality with others so that they can experience the love, joy, hope, and peace of Christ that can get us all through all of the struggles of this life and keep us holy unto eternal life.

 

Let us pray.

 

www.sheepspeak.com

Luke 4:16-21; Isaiah 2:4, (Isaiah 61:1-4; Matthew 25:31-46). Swords, Summer Rain, and Salvation.

Presented to the Summer Rain Christian Festival and TSA AVM on 19 and 20 July, 2025 by Major Michael Ramsay

 

Last year here I spoke about Human Trafficking and the workers at San Group. They said they paid between $20 000.00 and $30 000.00 to come here to work for a wage in excess of $30/hr. They said they never received that wage. They said they were subject to unsafe working conditions: working with toxic chemicals without proper protective gear, working long hours, many days in a row. They were afraid for themselves, and they were afraid for the safe transportation of their family. They showed us where they lived. They explained to us how they lived. They asked us to help them flee.

 

fifteen of the 16 workers were taken out of town to a secure Salvation Army facility in Victoria where they could have their physical, emotional and spiritual care needs met and where they could get the legal and other counsel that they needed.

 

The years prior I spoke here about our Emergency Disaster Services work and pointing people to salvation from natural disasters. This was really on my mind lately as all those children recently died in Texas. The first international deployment I was ever on was in Texas. Those children who died recently were at a Christian sleep away camp. We just sent 33 children from here to a sleep-away camp. It has been heavy on my heart. When I spoke about our EDS work here last, I spoke about a hurricane that struck Galveston where people didn’t necessarily need to perish; people who had the chance to choose to get on a bus to escape the impending disaster or to stay and perish: some chose salvation, some rejected it.

 

I often speak about how salvation is forever and how it begins right now and we can choose to take advantage of that salvation – whether it be a bus out of town to free us from human trafficking or a bus out of town to free us from impending flood or hurricane or a metaphorical bus out of sin and death into eternal life. But…

 

Salvation, of course, is more than that. Jesus, Luke, Isaiah, the Bible speaks about a salvation society as one where the sick are healed, the captives are freed, the hungry are fed, the lonely are visited, the perpetrator is forgiven, relationships are healed. Isaiah 2:4 speaks of Salvation as where the Lord:

He will judge between the nations

and will settle disputes for many peoples.

They will beat their swords into plowshares

and their spears into pruning hooks.

Nation will not take up sword against nation,

nor will they train for war anymore.

 

In our world, in our country, in our province, in our city there is still conflict, abuse, addiction, poverty, homelessness, murder, mental illness, hate, violence, unforgiveness…and we still pick up our swords. What if we didn’t have to wait until we die to experience a world without all of this? What if Christ was right and he wasn’t lying to us? What if the Kingdom of God is actually at hand? What if the Church (and our churches) is actually the body of Christ and what if we actually do this? It has been said that poverty isn’t a matter of scarcity: God has provided more than enough for the whole world; poverty is a matter of distribution. Countries, organizations, and people with resources simply do not share. I understand that the payroll of the NY Yankees alone could feed and clothe the world – how many sports teams are there in Canada and the US alone? Baseball? Hockey? Football? I plan to watch the game today … Is that what we choose instead of feeding a starving child? America is seemingly always at war and we are when they tell us. I read an article about their recent bombing of Iran. It was a very small American attack – nothing like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya. etc. They only used four planes: each plane cost one billion dollars, the missiles they launched each cost 1 million dollars. How many American children could they feed, shelter and educate for that? They (we) would rather spend money killing other people’s children than providing the needed care and education to save their (our) own children. It seems that they (we) would rather their (our) own children die in poverty than pass up the opportunity to kill their (our) enemies’ children. Isaiah says God’s nations will beat swords into ploughshares. We are beating ploughshares into swords. I only pick on the US because I read the article about them and they are the world’s only superpower: Israel, Britain, France, China, Russia, India, Canada, etc., etc. etc.… it all applies. Our countries: if we are sheep nations rather than goat nations, if we are saved, we will beat our swords into ploughshares and we will put more effort into saving people than we do in killing them.

 

Of the over 35 million people in Canada today, 35 485 of us are locked in cages, prisons. There are homeless people right here on the streets of our town today. In BC addiction is more in your face than anywhere else in Canada. I did not see as many people on the streets in Regent Park, Toronto, Canada’s first ghetto, as I did in front of the OPS here when I first arrived.

 

Matthew 25:31ff says that the sheep nations, the ones that are saved are ones who feed the hungry, water the thirsty, visit the lonely, sick and imprisoned, house the unhoused stranger…. Are we a saved nation or do we have unhoused, hungry, lonely people in prison and on the streets? Do you care? Are we as the church doing our part? Are we members of the Kingdom of God fighting to overthrow the powers, principalities and systems of this world?

 

Who here professes Christ as our saviour? When we look at Matthew 25:31ff – even the goat nations that don’t go to spend eternity with our Lord do that! Matthew 7 says that not everyone who calls Jesus Lord is saved. Salvation is more than that. I recently read a poem that was shared at a ‘poor persons conference’ in Albergue years ago. Here is a modified excerpt:

I was hungry

and you formed a … club

and discussed my hunger.

Thank you.

 

I was imprisoned

And you crept off quietly

To your chapel in the cellar

And prayed for my release

[Thank you]

 

I was sick

And you knelt

and thanked God

for your health

[Thank you]

 

I was homeless

And you preached to me

Of the spiritual shelter of

The love of God

[Thank you]

 

I was lonely

and you left me alone

 to pray for me.

[Thank you]

 

You seem so holy;

So close to God

But I’m still very hungry

And lonely

And cold…

 

Liberation Theologian Albert Nolan asks, “How can one speak about the church as the body of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth when church people are so healthy, well-fed and have no broken bones?”  Are we complicit with the systems of this world or are we fighting to expand the Kingdom of God? What can we do? How can you and I at least, beat our swords into ploughshares? How can you and I, at least, act like sheep? First we must advocate for real change! (to de-commodify the world for starters) Then we must do it!

 

Now there is a glimmer of hope even here. This Thursday, as every Thursday, there was I prayer meeting at the Bread of Life Centre. Friends who eat with us there, friends who sleep there, friends who live and visit us there – they pray. You should see the tears. You should hear the testimonies. The Spirit is moving (preaching Good News through the poor); God is transforming lives.

 

When I was in the Cypress Heath region, people were dying in the hospital without the congregations or their pastors even knowing they were there. People were not getting any support. The Lord used His people to set up a hospital chaplaincy program where a pastor would do the rounds everyday and visit everyone in the hospital and reach out to the pastors of the other churches when their congregation members were in the hospital.

 

When I was in Southwest Saskatchewan it was put on hearts, the number of people who were going to prison over and over again – and the number of victims of crime who never had the opportunity to face their accuser and never had the opportunity to be free of unforgiveness. Before my time, God used TSA set up restorative justice in SW Saskatchewan where the victim and offender were able to see each other, the victim would be able to have their questions answered and the victim would be given the opportunity to be freed from unforgiveness which can kill us all.

 

During my time there, God used His people to set up a transition through incarceration program where we sat with the offender (and victim) in court, kept in touch with them in prison, set them up with a place to stay, a job, a social group that was different than the one they had when they went into prison. Of all the people we sat with only one person ever re-offended. Societies can be changed. God does transform lives and He will transform the world. (We do need to get rid of prisons altogether! In the Kingdom of God people aren’t locked in cages!)

 

Since I have been in town, I have seen God use His people to set up the shelter at the Bread of Life centre, and provide food and shelter 24 hours a day, seven days a week through staff, volunteers, soldiers, and community partners (including the ministerial association and various churches) past and present. (We do need to provide supportive housing; there is no homelessness in the Kingdom of God)

 

My friends, this is what the kingdom of God looks like; this is what Salvation looks like. It is people being transformed as they come to know our Lord and Saviour; it is societies being transformed as they come to follow our Lord and Saviour. Are you a part of God’s transformative church in our society? Do you want to be? Do you want to offer food and prayer to people on the food truck? You can. Do you want to serve people at the food bank or the soup kitchen? You can. Do you want to lead a Bible Study at the shelter or the Bread of Life? You can. If service, study, or hospitality are not your gifts… maybe you would like to organize a food drive? Maybe God has given you two coats and you can donate one to the Thrift Store - so that it can either be given to someone in need, or sold to someone in need so that they can have the dignity of selecting and purchasing it themselves, and/or sold to generate funds for services to those in need? Maybe you don’t think that you have anything to offer but maybe beyond your tithes to your local congregation, God is leading you to feed the hungry in your own community by writing a cheque. There are a million ways or more to serve and be used by God as part of transforming our whole society into a salvation society and everyone is welcome to participate!

 

I often think of Randall from my time in Toronto. He is blind. I think he grew up in quite an abusive home. He lived in 220 Oak, the worst building in one of the worst areas of Toronto. Randall is a soldier in our Salvation Army. Randall played music. He was a blind man carrying a tuba (or baritone) on his back, his white cane in his hand, finding his way on subways, busses, and through the roughest most crime ridden areas of Toronto by himself to play music at churches, funerals, Christmas kettles, anywhere he went he shared the gospel in music. And every Friday morning at 7am he would join me and others as we walked around regent park and prayed for people living in the neighbourhood that was once North America’s first ghetto. This is Salvation and it begins now and continues on forever. I have friends of mine from my time serving at Stoney Mountain Penitentiary in Winnipeg who, even though they were behind bars, led people to a saving relationship with our Lord who then brought that Salvation they found behind bars to the outside world. God can use each and everyone of us to change this world, to grow His Kingdom!

 

We posted a picture recently on social media of a child who donated his birthday money to the Bread of Life Centre – most of our employees at The Salvation Army are what in contemporary vernacular we call ‘piers’ or people with ‘lived experience’ – most of us come from backgrounds of addiction, abuse, homelessness. I can’t tell you the number of people we have working with us right now who have their first ever jobs and they are in their 30s 40s and 20s, parents, people who God is using to do wonderful, amazing things.

 

God will transform Our world – He promises whole new heavens and a whole new earth. The question for us is will we be a part of it? We can. He wants us to be.

 

So, let us ask to the Lord where and how He would like each of us to live out our salvation, to be a part of His Kingdom? Let us ask Him how He can use each of us to point our neighbour to salvation both now and forever? As the Lord is leading you to help out in your church, go talk to your pastor today while it is still on your heart. As the Lord is leading you to help at the soup kitchen, shelter, foodbank, food truck, or other ways, you are welcome to chat with me today. As we all share the Gospel of Christ in word and deed, then the Lord can and will save us all and He will use even us to transform our society into His Kingdom, to make our whole world anew.

 

Let us pray

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Genesis 1-3, Matthew 28, 1 Corinthians 15: He is Risen!

Presented to TSA Alberni Valley Ministries, Resurrection Easter Sunday by Major Michael Ramsay, 20 April 2025.

He is risen! (He is risen indeed!)

 

Easter is the most important date on the Christian Calendar. Do we know why it is the most important date? What are we celebrating? (the resurrection of Jesus) Why does this matter? (it means we can all be raised from the dead)

 

We read the story of Mary and Mary at the tomb today. I think that is a very important story about the first Christian evangelists and preachers: Two women proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Do we know the rest of the story?

 

At the very beginning of the Bible, in the first few chapters of the first book in this holy anthology, we have the story of how God created the heavens and the earth. God created it all and it was perfect. Not only were there no bad things like murder, stealing, lying, etc. There was also no injury, no illness, no decay, no death. Even the trees didn’t die. The animals didn’t eat each other. It was paradise – it was the Garden of Eden.

 

Then the very first people that God created did something – they disobeyed God. This was the first badness to enter the world. The first sin. From that point on all that erodes life and goodness flowed into the world. Not only bad behaviours but also decay of plants, animals, and people; injury, illness and death.

 

The Bible then, as we know, has many books in the Old Testament that tell how people interacted with each other and God ever since. Mostly – but not entirely – after a certain point, the books speak about the family and descendants of Jacob who was called Israel. Many of these books are looking forward to a time when the world will no longer be in the state that it is in – when everything will be finally made right.

 

There are many recorded memories of God’s interaction with people, giving us a glimpse into when and how things might possibly return. Under and after Moses there is the Law that is given to God’s people to help us know how to relate to each other – in short it can be boiled down to, as Jesus later said, ‘love God and love your neighbour’ – while we are waiting for everything to be set right.

 

Before that even, God and Abraham make an agreement, recorded in Genesis Chapter 12, that all the nations of the earth will be blessed through Abraham and then in Genesis 15 we get our first glimpse of the cross. There is a ceremony, a covenant and God basically says that if mankind messes up again, like they did in the garden, God will take the punishment, He will die. We do mess up. On Good Friday He does.

 

The word ‘gospel’ that we still use today means, ‘good news’. On Easter – a few days later - we have the Good News. Yes God, Jesus, died. He went to the grave. But then something happened. He came back to life – and when he came back to life, he came back with a body that no longer decays, no longer experiences illness, no longer experiences death. He is the first person to experience life back like it was in the Garden of Eden.

 

Now, I say first ‘person’ for a reason. Jesus is God. Jesus is also a person. He is fully, truly and properly God and he is fully, truly and properly human. At Christmas we celebrate God becoming human – He, who was around at the creation of the world, was also, much later, born. On Good Friday he dies. On Easter He has the first fully resurrected body. His body will now never die, never get sick, never get injured. And when he overcame death on Easter, he really overcame it – not just for himself but for everyone. Jesus never died after his resurrection (like others who have risen from the dead). He went away for a while; but he will come back.

 

When he comes back, he will bring with him the Tree of Life that was in the Garden of Eden and the whole world will be made anew. We spoke about this a few weeks ago while we were looking at Romans 5, Genesis 3, and Revelation 22 where the ultimate return of God is recorded.

 

So that is what we are celebrating today: the first fruits of the resurrection, that the world is set right, and the path has been paved for Jesus’ return. On Easter, God made a way so that we never need to die (again). The Bible says that when he returns, even those who are already dead will raise from the grave and they will never die again and those who are still alive will be changed, healed, transformed into these never decaying, never dying entities that love fully both God and our neighbour forever.

 

Today, as we celebrate His victory over death, decay, and sin; We are even now awaiting Jesus’ return. While we wait, we are we are told a couple of things to do

1.     Never forget what he has done for us and that he will return.

a.     In the Bible they meet regularly over a meal to remember Jesus.

b.     Now we meet on the Lord’s Day, Sunday, and at other occasions, as well as have other ceremonies, to remember what the Lord has done and what we have to look forward to.

 

2.     And the other thing we need to do is to share the love of God with others. We can do this by telling others about God while we take care of one another.

 

So today, as we are celebrating Jesus’ resurrection to eternal life and awaiting his return when the whole world will be set right, let us do our part.

 

God has provided enough to feed, clothe, and shelter everyone in the world; He has given us this beautiful earth to take care of – and He asks nothing more of us that to love Him and take care of each other until He returns  - let us do that until he returns, for when he comes back there will be no more death, no more decay, no more sorrow, no more sadness; only joy, peace and wholeness because He has risen! (He has risen, indeed)

 

Let us Pray

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