forest hill Musings -- weekly reflections on Scripture
Musings -- weekly reflections on Scripture
I began writing these short essays for our weekly e-newsletter. They served two purposes: First, they gave me an initial run at the Scripture that I would be preaching on -- an opportunity to start thinking about the spiritual and life questions that the sermon might address. Second, they serve as advertising; an invitation to folks to join us on Sunday morning and see how my thinking has developed between the first take on my questions and the final sermon that gets delivered.
We've started collecting these at this website so that people who aren't already subscribed to our newsletter can get a sense of what's coming up in worship. Feel free to check back weekly to see the reflection for the week, or click here to subscribe to our email newsletter and have these delivered into your inbox every Friday
Rev. Stephen Fetter
December 7, 2025
"A Time to Turn Around"
John the Baptist must have been a scary man: weird clothes, bugs for breakfast, and fire in his belly. People who are willing to put everything on the line for their faith are frequently compelling, and John clearly drew a following. For all his oddities, he articulated the complaints of his generation with clarity, precision and passion, and they turned out by the thousand to listen to his message and be baptised.
And what a message it was! God is on the way to set things right, he preached. Watch out! Particularly if you’re powerful; particularly if you’re supporting the ones who are running things now; particularly if you’re profiting from the Roman regime, watch out! The axe is about to fall! None of this is going to last, and God’s vengeance is about to strike. Be sure you’re on the right side when that happens.
It’s impossible to know exactly what “baptism” meant for John. Clearly it was some kind of cleansing ritual – a symbolic washing away of the things that impede God’s work. But it was probably also a re-enactment of the Entry into the Promised Land – a symbolic reminder that God who heard the cries of slaves in Egypt was also hearing the cries of oppressed people under the current Roman rule. Those Israelites from Egypt walked through the Jordan River to get to their new home; John took them out to the borders of the Promised Land so they could walk through the same river all over again. Baptism was probably initiation into a movement that was preparing to take up arms when God’s armies arrived. Maybe he even thought that if enough people got committed in this way, it would encourage God to act sooner.
November 30, 2025
Celebration of Holy Communion
"A Time for Waiting"
Matthew 24:36-44
" Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken, and one will be left. Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” (Matthew 24: 41, 42)
Does this story fill you with anticipation, or with dread? With hope or with terror? How should we make sense of predictions about the future that crop up in the Bible?
Let’s acknowledge, to start with, that Christians have never agreed on a common interpretation of this passage from Matthew’s Gospel! There is no timeline for an end of the world (or an end of this era) that is considered “generally agreed orthodox theology.” Interpretations are, and always have been, all over the map.
November 23, 2025
Reign of Christ
"The Image of the Invisible God"
How do you imagine God?
Do you imagine perfection: perfect beauty; perfect love; perfect harmony; perfect fairness – the epitome of all that we strive towards, and all that makes the world work?
Do you imagine a fatherly leader who reaches into our world to repair and restore and make all things new?
Do you imagine a fearsome warrior, or a demanding judge, who scourges evil doers, rescues their victims, and showers the faithful with rewards?
Do you imagine a jealous and partisan Force that demands obedience and undermines those who won’t toe the line? Or a dispassionate Energy that needs to be bought off with presents and sacrifices in order to do the right thing?
Read more: Musing -- November 23, 2025 - The Image of the Invisible God
November 16, 2025
Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost
"Uncertain Times"
November is such a grey month: dreary weather, shortening days, the time change that means dusk arrives before the evening rush hour. By mid-month the trees look barren, and mud and muck are everywhere. Even the unusually early snowfall that cleaned things up for a bit last week didn’t last. The snow has melted; dreariness returns.
And there isn’t even a holiday till Christmas, which can feel like eons away as the days darken.
The readings recommended for worship in these gloomy November days invite us to contemplate endings. Nothing lasts forever, they remind us; even the monuments that we build to epitomize power and human strength. Even the most intricate examples of human ingenuity. All that we build, and all that we create, will eventually crumble.
It’s depressing. But it’s true. It’s the human condition.
This year, add in the trade war that threatens the jobs of our neighbours and our national sovereignty. Add in the climate deniers who are boycotting the COP 30 negotiations and preventing the world from moving towards a healthier future. Add in the wars and rumours of war in Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine. Add in … well, you name it. There’s always lots to wring our hands about. Most of them, things we can’t do anything about. Endings are discouraging, and we’d rather avoid them all together.
Does God have a message for us, in uncertain times like this? How have our ancestors in faith found strength to hope, when human endeavours flounder? What would Jesus advise? Why do we expect from the Higher Power we venerate every Sunday?
In the passage from Luke this week, Jesus says we shouldn’t be surprised when times get uncertain. This isn’t a sign that God has failed us, he claims; it’s simply the nature of the world. Endings abound; don’t let that shake your faith in the God of Life.
Jesus says, “this will give you a chance to testify.” Interesting. Testify what? Testify to the power of the God of Life that continues, even when human strength fails? Have we experienced that? Have we caught glimpses of that in our own lives? Do we have life experience to ground that kind of testimony?
Jesus says, “You will be hated by all because of my name.” This doesn’t feel encouraging! But standing for fairness in a world that’s brutally unjust doesn’t win you praises from the powerful. Standing for kindness in a world that’s brutalized usually gets you written off as a naïve do-gooder. Standing for beauty in a world that vandalizes and lashes out with ugliness gets you mocked and sidelined. But it’s still worth it. Standing for fairness, kindness and beauty diminishes the power of all that degrades our own lives and the lives of the vulnerable around us. I wish I had the courage and insight to do that more often than I do!
Jesus says, “Not a hair on your head will perish.” Really? Is that possible? Is there a future beyond the “perishing” that happens in this world, where we can expect to be held and treasured and delighted in? Even if we “perish” in this world, are we still a part of God’s Creation? I want to trust that!
The reading calls us to lift our eyes higher than the greyness of the skies. Higher than the auroras that danced across the night this week. Higher than our human hopes or our human failings. Lift our eyes to all that lasts when human endeavour fails.
You are a part of that Creation. You are connected to all that has value; all that has strength; all that brings joy; all that lasts. Walk through uncertain times trusting in the Eternal one, and testify to the ways that walking in that light empowers us to act for life, even when our actions seem puny or unremarkable. When we face the uncertainty of the human condition with courage and trust in the power of life, we join our efforts to the song of the stars, and remarkable things are possible.
November 9, 2025
Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost
Remembrance Day Observations
Celebration of Holy Communion
"Keep Calm and Carry On"
“Keep Calm and Carry On” is a slogan that was originally written in 1939 and never used. The British government’s Ministry of Information printed 2.45 million posters with the slogan but they planned to release it only if there were a full-scale invasion or a serious escalation of the war. Things never got that bad, and the posters were pulped in 1940, to help with a paper shortage. The slogan didn’t even become public until 2000 when a single surviving poster was discovered. Since then, of course, it’s become a powerful Internet meme and appears on coffee mugs, t-shirts and hoodies throughout the English-speaking world.
I suspect it’s become so popular because those five words capture a sense of how to endure dire things. We humans are a lot stronger than we sometimes imagine; we can indeed face adversity with grit even when hope seems irrational. That grit is part of what we acknowledge on Remembrance Day; it’s also important life-advice for the other times in our lives when adversity seems to overwhelm possibility. When hope vanishes, act hopefully anyway.
When Paul was writing to the Thessalonians in this week’s Scripture reading, he offered a strikingly similar message. They were living with persecution; they were expecting wars and conflicts; they were concerned that some of their church members had even died before the Second Coming of Jesus would set things right and rescue them; they wondered whether the adversity meant that God had given up on them.
With 2000 years of hindsight, we can scoff at their belief that Jesus would return immanently to set things right. The Second Coming that so many expected in the first generation of Christianity simply didn’t happen, and eventually we evolved new ways to understand what God is doing to set the world to rights. Clearly swooping in with an army of angels to punish the bad guys didn’t happen! It still hasn’t. And still, people live with adversity: global societal crises that kill or maim thousands, and personal devastating tragedies that degrade or destroy human lives.
Whether we’re trying to make sense of intractable wars or the impact of Alzheimer’s on a family, we need ways to cope with the worst that can happen. And we all wonder about how and whether the God we trust in could make a difference to us when everything falls apart.
Paul’s advice to his flock is still just as relevant today: give up on the notion that being Christian protects us from times adversity. It doesn’t. There were always devastating times, and there continue to be. Wars and rumours of war are part of the human condition. But even when rational hope fails, we have resources in our traditions that help us to move forward. They help us to “keep calm and carry on.” And so, says Paul, plumb the depths of that tradition. Saturate yourself in the ways that our ancestors found God even as the world fell apart around them. Trust that when all else fails, still God is there to pick up the pieces and inspire new life, new growth, new joy, new wonder.
In 1939 when that slogan was coined, no one knew what the outcome of the war would be. No one knew how bad things would get. No one knew whether they would survive the catastrophe. But the world is still here; life continues; joy is possible; hope is still a reasonable option. We remember this week … and we also give thanks for all that emerges when we follow Paul’s advice to, “stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us” (2 Thess. 2:15)
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