​Worship Leader:  Paul Whiteley, LLWL                                                                           Music Director:  Tim Hallman, B.Mus.,B.Ed.

 FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY, FEBRUARY 8, 2026

“Black History Month”

WELCOME / ANNOUNCEMENTS / CELEBRATIONS

 LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

LIGHTING OF CHRIST CANDLE

CALL TO WORSHIP:
One: We come to worship today determined to follow the Christ
All: who calls us to a new understanding of service.
One: We come to worship with open hearts and minds
All: and a soul ablaze for justice and equality.
One: We come to meet God and each other.
All: Let us worship in love and understanding.
-Charmain Bailey, United Church of Canada, 2022, lightly adapted

HYMN: MV 88 “Over My Head”

PASSING OF THE PEACE

OPENING PRAYER:
Lord of bounty and blessing, we come to you this day in gratitude for all that we have been given. We are grateful for the blessings and for the opportunities to be of service to others in your holy Name. Bless each of us here, that we may become truly blessings to others. For we ask this in Jesus’ Name. Amen.
-Worship Liturgy for Black History Month, United Church of Canada, 2022

LEARNING TOGETHER

HYMN: MV 142 “Oh a Song Must Rise”

SCRIPTURE:
Isaiah 58:1–9a: “A Challenging Fast”
Matthew 5:13-16 “Light of the World”

ANTHEM: “It Takes A Village”

REFLECTION: “Fasting for Justice”

Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
    only a day for people to humble themselves?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
    and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
    a day acceptable to the Lord?

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
    and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
    and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
    and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
    and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Isaiah 58:5-7

Today’s reflection starts from a place of ritual preparation – fasting – and wanders its way towards the light by drawing on threads of Black history. Like Black Christianity, it draws heavily on stories of Hebrew scripture: stories of slavery, and freedom, and prophecy. So I want to start raising questions about how we make sense of the Old and New Testaments. With that foundation, I’ll point out threads the Black church has contributed to Christianity in Canada, and then to social movements in the United States and beyond.

 As we know, scripture can be read in different ways, from different perspectives. And one way of reading Hebrew scripture in particular is to conjure up the image of an “Old Testament God”. Some who call themselves Christians and read scripture make out the God of Israel to be a harsh God: a god of judgement, contrasted to a New Testament god of mercy and of grace.

So I’d like to push back a bit on this way of reading scripture. I find it to be distorted, and out of line with the heart and core of our tradition as Christians. Now Hebrew scripture does contain many harsh passages and descriptions of divine judgement – including today’s passage from Isaiah. But I don’t think it has anything in it as harsh as those few, atypical, passages the New Testament that talk about judging and condemning people’s souls.

So from my own perspective, judging people’s souls is NOT the good news of the gospels, and I don’t think the similarly judgmental passages of Hebrew scripture represent the heart of that covenant, either. I really can’t see a difference, either, between the hope of Hebrew scripture and the hope of the gospel: the good news for the poor is the same; the light for the nations is a blessing for all.

If anything, the biggest difference between Hebrew scripture and the gospels is that almost all of Hebrew scripture is addressed to the whole community – the people of Israel and the nations – while a significant part of the gospels addresses each of us as individuals, reminding us to align our lives with God’s love. But even in the New Testament, Paul’s letters are written to communities, and the gospels themselves can’t limit their message to individual healing: they keep pointing away from the individual out towards social connections – sharing God’s light with the world.

So as I considered what to include in this reflection, I was drawn from the scriptures towards Black History Month, and specifically to the traditions of Black christian churches in Canada and the United States. We tend to be aware of Union United in Montreal, a historically Black church still giving witness in Montreal: the community that produced and supported Jazz great Oscar Peterson. But today I want to point in a couple of directions beyond the United Church: to the Black Methodist loyalists and the Black Baptist movement.

Some of us might have heard of the African Methodist Episcopal church, though I for one had forgotten that the church still exists in Canada, with a large “mother” church in Toronto and congregations in places like Windsor; Laval, Quebec; and Amherst, Nova Scotia. Wesleyans at the time of the American War of Independence were divided according to politics and race as well as theology, and when early Methodists established churches they came to reflect those other identities.

In Ontario, African Methodist Episcopal churches were sustained by the Underground Railroad, as formerly enslaved people from the United States came to freedom in British North America, after slavery was outlawed here in 1834. But in Nova Scotia, the first Black Methodists arrived before 1790, and established communities under much more difficult conditions.

Some of you might remember the CBC miniseries “the Book of Negroes” – based on real events, it tells the story of the thousands of self-emancipated Black men and women who took the British at their word, fled from their enslavers, and joined forces with the Loyalists. Not all of these promises were honored, but more than 3,000 names were inscribed under Samuel Birch’s direction in the “Book of Negroes” – this was essentially a kind of refugee screening process. As free people, regardless of prior enslavement, these Black Loyalists sailed to Nova Scotia in 1783. However, neither the climate nor their white loyalist neighbours were kind to those who settled at Birchtown near Sherbourne, Nova Scotia, and within 10 years, almost half of the community had moved again, becoming the founders of Freetown in Sierra Leone.

For those who watched the miniseries a decade ago, one figure you might remember is “Daddy Moses”, the preacher who inspires and guides formerly enslaved people along this journey. The real Moses Wilkinson was one of the first Methodists to preach in Nova Scotia and also a natural founder of churches. According to the historical record, Daddy Moses preached a faith that was grounded in the African spirituality of his ancestors, while incorporating the Methodist gospel he heard and believed. He led some of the Black Methodists on to Sierra Leone; however, the church he founded in Birchtown in 1784 became part of mainstream Canadian Methodism and so, indirectly, forms part of the tapestry of the United Church of Canada.

While some of the Black Loyalists arrived as, or soon became, Methodists, many ended up within Baptist churches, and Nova Scotia’s Black communities have relied on the churches of the African United Baptist Association as their bedrock and continuing support. This parallels what happened south of the border: as Black communities stabilized and rebuilt after the abolition movement, the Civil War, and bitterly contested reconstruction, it was Black Baptist churches that typically formed the heart of African-American communities, in the U.S. South as in the cities of the Great Migration

(and in Nova Scotia as well).

When I think about the tradition of prophets and spirit-filled leaders in the 20th century, at the top of my list is the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I also feel that, like the people of Israel in Hebrew Scripture, as we work through the trials and tribulations of the present it helps if we let ourselves be guided by the stories of the living past. And to me, Dr. King is part of a living past. My one time in Atlanta, I visited his National Historic Site and heard his recorded preaching at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. But also, when my mother lived in the South she head Dr. King address a gathering associated with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. So to me, Dr. King’s activism in the 50s and 60s does not seem very long ago

or very far away.

Almost 60 years after his death, Dr. King is remembered as a hero of the struggle for African-American civil rights, and perhaps also the most important figure after Mahatma Gandhi to practice and preach non-violent civil disobedience. But he was first and foremost a man of faith: a theologian, a pastoral minister, and some would even say a prophet. And while literal fasting was more part of Gandhi’s mode of activism, the fasting we read of in scripture – the hunger and thirst in preparation for good to prevail – was a constant in Dr. King’s life story.

In Atlanta, Dr. King was arrested and imprisoned at sit-ins to protest racial injustice. He was jailed in Birmingham for organizing illegal marches against segregation. He marched against police brutality and for justice for poor people, and for union rights. He was persecuted by the FBT and racist politicians because of his stand against racism, for opposing the Vietnam war and for his grass-roots activism against poverty. He was slandered as a communist and accused of anti-Americanism by U.S. government spokespeople. And, finally, he was silenced by an assassin’s bullet in Memphis.

Today, we have heard the gospel call to be a light shining from a hill, that all the world can see. The philosophy of non-violent action rests on the same basis: responding to injustice with justice in front of the world can be a move toward right relations, at least in the long arc of history. Through non-violent action, we can call evil by its name and not give in to its power. We can respond to each unjust act not defensively, or by collecting grievances, but with determined, principled, non-violent resistance. This is the message Dr. King distilled from the Black church, from existentialist philosophy, from Mahatma Gandhi and from the prophets of Hebrew scripture. By following his own calling, Dr. King walked a path that we can see and respect, where we can hear the truth he spoke to power, and which can inspire us in small ways to face evil times with hope for blessed assurance. So for the blessings of his life, the blessings of the Black church that formed him, and the blessings of our ancestors in faith – in enslavement and in freedom – let us give thanks. Amen.

INVITATION FOR OFFERING

OFFERING HYMN: VU 541 “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow”

OFFERING PRAYER

PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE / LORD’S PRAYER

Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done;
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from the evil one.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.

HYMN: VU 87 “I Am the Light of the World”

BENEDICTION

 CHORAL BLESSING: “Go Now in Peace"

         "A Village Church With A Heart For The World"

Christ United Church

12 Perth St., Lyn, ON, K0E 1M0
(613)498-0281 (Phone)   (613)498-2589 (Fax)

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