 I'm here to be with all of you on this important day, and I'm grateful to be here on the land of the Miranwenda people. Let's skip right to the end. Right to the end of a wonderful passage of Isaiah. It was clearly a favorite of Jesus's. I think we can say that because he chose it for his open celebration of ministry service. Well, okay, he chose it to mark the beginning of his ministry. He stood up to read and was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and he hoped it and found the passage which says, The Spirit of our Gala is upon you. Let's skip right to the end. Straight to the great promises of God. They shall build up the ancient ruins. They shall raise up the former devastations, and they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. These are bold promises. Rebuilt. Repair. Renew. Restore. Do we believe that it's possible? Do we believe in this kind of transformation, the kind that takes a broken country, a stratified people, and with truth brings forth reconciliation? Do we believe in the kind of transformation that regenerates the air and land and waters that are aching from our exploitation? Do we believe that kind of healing is possible? Do we believe in the kind of transformation that brings peace, where it can barely be imagined in peace with justice when the word now is terror or fear? Do we believe? It's hard. Sometimes all we can do is stay in the harsh reality of the now or the best horror of someone else's faith. But today is a day that we're called to say yes. To say yes, we believe. Yes, we believe, and in that confidence and humility, send these beautiful people out to witness that good news to the world. We send these people in and out to meet in spiriters of hope. We send them to collaborate with us and with God to bring forth this transformation that we believe against all odds is possible. Must be. We send them out to witness to a hope so bold that we dare collaborate with God to make it so. Isaiah, whoever they were, had a way with words, wouldn't you say? And we read it today, as Jesus did, as a call to ministry. A call so challenging, so integral to comfort the unsettled, to unsettle the comfortable. And I think it has three things to say for us in this moment. An affirmation of the accompaniment of God, a confirmation of the integral union of love and justice, and a recognition of the poignant leadership of the brokenhearted. The spirit of God is upon me. The spirit is upon within underneath. The God of this text is spirit, rule, breath, air, strength, wind, breeze, courage. It is the act of dynamism of presence. It's the breath of the Creator who brings forth life. It's the God in us in every act of love because God is love, and in every step for justice because God loves justice. It's the God in between us. It's the God underneath us, the ground of our being, from which we grow as oak trees, as maple trees of trying to be rightness. And we gather here today to celebrate ministries in which you must never feel alone. We live in God's world. We live the Creator's dreams. We find God in one another. First, we affirm the accompaniment of God. And second, in this text, the pastoral and the prophetic are deeply intertwined. In this call, there is no separation between love and justice, no congregational care committee without a social justice committee, no appeal to principles without consideration of people, of relations. That call to pastor, to bring good news, to bind up the broken hearted, to comfort those who mourn is matched with the call to proclaim liberty to the captives, to release the prisoner, and that year of favor that Julie dream when equity and ecological integrity are restored when liberation is made permanent in new social and economic relations, when all our relations walk safely in the glory of God. The issue here is not keeping on ministry tasks. It's how a vocation and ministry, a community of faith needs both to be whole, how reconciliation needs renewed relationships and a systemic shift of power and resources, how love is integral to justice, how justice is the public face of love. And out of our boldness, the boldness of our hope, and out of the depth of our love for the oppressed and the broken hearted and those made captive, we must of necessity sometimes go up river to confront the systems, the structures, the powerful interests that create marginalization and ecological harm. To confront, especially when it's about our own privileges and interest takes a little courage and we know from our global partners that in Colombia or the Philippines, it's more than a little courage that is needed. And yet they still proclaim the good news as truth to power. You are called to love and minister in a global church, to take more than a little risk when the integrity of our brothers and sisters, when the integrity of the aching earth, whether at home or abroad is at stake, the pastoral and the prophetic as one to this we are called. And third, the recognition of the leadership of the broken hearted. The most important thing to observe in this text is the easiest to miss as we skip along in the familiarity and our sense of our own importance. It is the mourners who bring forth restoration. Listen, to comfort all who mourn, to provide for those who mourn in Zion, to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They shall be called oaks of righteousness. They shall build up the ancient ruins. They shall raise up the former devastations. They shall repair the ruined cities. It's the mourners who build up, raise up repair. It is the broken hearted who heal. It is the oppressed who liberate. You are not. We are not called to a ministry of fixing others to do something for them. It's about being with a call to facilitating, to enable, to support, to join our own brokenness to those we minister with until together we're transformed. One of my most poignant days was the opportunity to accompany Nadi Attis Sumit to the Truth of Reconciliation national event in Vancouver. And Nadi is a long time Kyra's partner from Guatemala. She's Mayan and her mother was murdered in the Guatemalan conflict and her sister was disappeared. She's now the most respected human rights activist, fighting among many other challenges the threat and impact of our mining companies. And Nadi was an honorary witness to the TRC here in Canada and then she brought her solidarity and that of the Indigenous people of Guatemala. And walking with Nadi after she had spoken as an honorary witness was a very slow process. We would take a few steps and then she'd be approached by someone who stopped in the residential school survivor who would clasp her hands and say something like, my sister, my sister of my heart. And despite the language barriers, it was completely understood. She of the broken hearted, she the one who awards brings her solidarity, her integrity, her witness to our broken heartedness of the residential school story. She who knew so profoundly injustice was there to join in truth in the healing and in the future hope of reconciliation. Women human rights defenders conspire for their own liberation and invite us in solidarity. Indigenous young people victims of intergenerational trauma lead the movement of reconciliation. Inuit activists whose way of life is threatened by our way of life propose climate solutions. Grief, stricken families find one another and plot paths of memory and healing and grace. The mortar will bring forth restoration and our ministry is to support, to advocate with, to facilitate, to be transformed, to join our broken hearts to theirs. To be with more than for and to bring our efforts into a common struggle until that restoration is made real. This mandate for ministry does not issue from a text of the good days only. This Isaiah in Scripture is a text of the real world. When return from exile doesn't go quite as you might have hoped. When the dreams of the returnees face the reality of ruined cities and stratified people. This is a text of disappointment for when ministry doesn't quite go as we planned when we can't get traction in a community when injustice seems permanent when the tunnel is very long. The context is dreams unrealized. And yet even if we are sent out this time and again and again in good news with the conviction that transformation must be possible. We are to be tangible signs of hope imperfect and partial but nonetheless a humble witness to that belief. Hope is found in the struggle in joining with others in action for transformation in welcoming solutions and possibilities and ministries and good news to come to us as much as from us. You will serve a broken hearted church. In a broken hearted country striving for reconciliation you will offer ministry to a world torn by war wounded by our exploitation and there are always more than enough people and families and communities brimming with griefs and challenges too great to bear. And yet we believe. We believe in you. In each one of you. In your gifts and strengths and vulnerabilities in the unique and particular ways each one of you will enable and sustain our collective hope will nurture and support our acts of love and justice. We welcome your leadership. We offer our accompaniment and we claim the promises of our transformative God who has always offered more than we can ask or imagine. Thanks be to God.