By Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, All Saints Crescent Beach

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Oct 27th 2024

I have to warn you that this is going to be a relatively bloody sermon.  How many of us have ever been bit by a spider? For the first time in my life while doorknocking perhaps 20,000 homes with Bryan Tepper, I was attacked twice by huge black mechanized spiders. I actually jumped back for a moment in shock. But fortunately those low-tech spiders didn’t actually draw any blood. Makes me wonder though about the next generation of AI Halloween spiders. 😉

Peace Arch News reports that the ‘House of Horrors’ is opening for 24th year in Surrey.

Gibbons commented: “Halloween is growing by leaps and bounds, and I think it’s going to catch up to Christmas one of these days, in the way of spending and that sort of thing, decorating.”

They went on to say: “The new Abomination house offers Texas Chainsaw Massacre-themed thrills on a “farm” with an old RV.

“It’s pretty cool looking with a very bloody kitchen and a bedroom and all that sort of thing,” Gibbons reported. “The farmer has some issues, shall we say. He likes to experiment in dastardly ways, so it’s very cool. I walked through it in the dark for the first time last night and with the lighting and everything, it’s amazing.”

My strongest memories of Halloween are my dressing up as my hero Superman. My dear mother made my superman costume, and even ordered me a blue wig because I was convinced from the comic books that Superman had blue hair.  Halloween back in the 1950s and 1960s was pretty bloodless. For me, it was more about avoiding kryptonite than watching out for bloody displays.  I must confess that I didn’t really like eating my large bag of collected Halloween Candy, so being a good entrepreneur, I made money selling it to my sisters. Halloween decorations however have become much darker, bloodier and violent than those relatively innocent days.  For many, Halloween has become an increasingly adult blood sport. 73% of North Americans bow the knee to Halloween.  Last year, a record $12.2 billion dollars was spent in North America on Halloween, $4.1 billion alone on costumes. This is up from the previous $10 billion dollars in 2022. Perhaps we could persuade people to donate some of their Halloween money to the Oikos renovations at All Saints Crescent Beach. 😉

Some experts say that adults are only supposed to have 25 grams of added sugar a day. Many Halloween candies are made of 80-90 percent sugar. Halloween nowadays is almost a prediabetic training day. RF Kennedy Jr. says that sugar overconsumption is linked to an epidemic in childhood diabetes and other chronic diseases, up from 6% to 60%. In America, 74% of Americans are now overweight or obese, including 50% of their children.  By contrast, only 3% of Japanese children are suffering from obesity. 

Secular culture is also obsessed with dabbling with evil at Halloween because we have been tricked into thinking that evil is just a big joke. Many woke Canadians think that there is no evil, no devil, no right and wrong. Morality and truth are all relative, depending who is in power at that moment.  Politicians, however, when they don’t believe in good and evil, in right and wrong, so easily sell their souls to the devil for political and financial advantage, present company excluded.  Alexander Solzhenitsyn said “The concepts of good and evil have been ridiculed for several centuries; banished from common use, they have been replaced by political or class considerations of short-lived value.”

What do you think of when you think of Christmas wreaths? The hottest new Halloween item I kept seeing while doorknocking is bloody Halloween wreaths with skulls and decapitated hands. As I contemplated the spiritual pull of Halloween while doorknocking, I realized afresh that modern Halloween is obsessed with death.  Irish Americans imported many druid religious practices into the darker side of Halloween. Druids loved to focus on ghosts, demons, witches, and other deadly, half-alive entities. In 1 Corinthians 15:26, the bible tells us that “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” Death is an enemy that cannot be defeated by ourselves, no matter how many bloody Halloween items we place on our front lawns.  Why does Halloween have such a strong pull on our culture? Hebrews 2:15 gives the reason:  The fear of death actually makes us slaves until the blood of Jesus on the cross sets us free. Until we surrender and receive Jesus as Lord and Saviour, turning from our darkness, we remain in slavery.  By the way, if you have never surrendered your will to Jesus and turned from your sins, you could do that this very morning. Just go to one of our prayer teams and tell them that you want to surrender your will to Jesus.

I discovered by the way while recently doorknocking that politics is indeed a blood sport even in BC. Charles Dickens in 1841 said that good people in the United States often avoid running for politics, because the press is so nasty towards them, mercilessly destroying their reputation.  Sadly, politics in Canada and the accompanying media coverage is getting much bloodier.  Our famous Canadian politeness is under assault. Some people think that it is their god-given right to be hateful and rude to others politically.  Alexander Solzhenitsyn prophetically said: “Why should one refrain from burning hatred, whatever its basis – race, class, or ideology? Such hatred is in fact corroding many hearts today.”

Politeness however is not completely dead in Canada.  I saw that politeness with our politicians speaking at the local White Rock/South Surrey Leadership Prayer Breakfast.

While doorknocking, some people told me how they are going to vote for another political party, and then apologized to me, saying that they are sorry.

 Any one nowadays who chooses to be involved in politics will be attacked and wounded, at least by mechanical spiders. To give a personal example, I kept cutting my hands and arms while carrying sharp lawn signs. Then I bashed my left ankle on a hidden plastic pipe, causing a bloody mess. It has taken weeks to fully heal up. It has given me a new understanding for the five wounds of Christ that many people contemplate in prayer, including the wound in his ankle. Spiritually speaking, many wounds in our life will never heal unless we remove the dirt of sin and cleanse our hurts in the healing blood of Christ, especially at Halloween. 

Has any noticed that our southern neighbours are having an election? Charles Dickens in 1841 said because of their Congress having elections every two years unlike the Senate every six years, they never get a rest, a sabbath from politics. When you never get a sabbath, a break from something, it has become an idol. I had a very political friend on the North Shore who broke up with his MLA (Member of legislature) girlfriend because she never took a sabbath break from politics.  She was political to the very core of her soul.  Here’s a quick way to discover one of your hidden idols. What are you actually doing instead when you skip church and/or skip reading your Bible and praying? If it’s sports, or sleep, or siblings or Halloween or politics, those are your idols. Politics easily becomes an idol to the politically involved.  Politics as an idol can become bloody and deadly.  Just think of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and Mao Se Tung.  We need to pray the blood of Jesus over the American election and even our BC election ‘hanging chad’ results so that we don’t end up with a bloody mess.

My late dear father was an agnostic and Sunday morning golfer for much of his life until he was converted in his 50s. As a former United Church member, my father didn’t have pornography in our house, which in the age of the internet nowadays is quite unusual. My engineering father never swore sexually or even about Jesus Christ. This is in stark contrast to our current highly sexualized conversation, with many younger men and even women swearing like troopers, dropping f bombs and Jesus Christ references almost casually. Being a former boy scout, my father rarely ever swore, only when he was deeply upset. His strongest swear word was the rather nonsensical British term ‘bloody hell’. I read that in Australia, bloody is just a generic adjective used to intensify any other noun like someone affectionately being called  a bloody idiot.

In today’s passage Isaiah 62, vs 1, Jesus the Jewish Messiah prophetically says to Israel and the nations: “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, for Jerusalem’s sake I will not remain quiet, till her vindication shines out like the dawn, her salvation like a blazing torch.

Just like my other recent sermons on Isaiah 60 & 61, this is a messianic passage about Jesus who will not keep silent. Have you ever wondered why Bishop Peter will not keep silent about the bloody darkness of Halloween?  Because he doesn’t want us to be deceived. Similarly, Jesus wants Israel and the nations to be set free from deception and gross darkness.

Why do so many of us love to sing “O Canada our home and native land”, especially at hockey games? We all long for a homeland. We all long for home sweet home. As Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz so powerfully concluded, there is no place like home. Woke DEI people love to make us like aliens in our own land of Canada. Government corruption and overspending is causing many Canadians to fear becoming homeless. Many young people in BC now fear that they will never have a place to call home. 

Homelessness has deeply shaped the Jewish experience.  The song ‘Somewhere over the rainbow’ was written by a Jewish person experiencing pogroms and longing to return to Jerusalem. At the end of every Passover feast, after drinking the fourth cup of redemption, Jewish people say ‘next year in Jerusalem’. The first written occurrence occurs in a tenth-century poem by the Spanish rabbi Joseph ibn Abitur.

Strong biblical themes of exile and restoration in Isaiah 62 particularly relate to the land, what Jews call in Hebrew Eretz Israel. Too often being landless and homeless is a very deep metaphor in the Bible for the Jewish people. Accordingly, salvation and redemption for the people of Israel is not just seen as a subjective private experience in one’s heart but rather an actual restoration to one’s land by the Saviour. The cry Hosanna to Jesus on Palm Sunday meant Save us Lord. Save us from the Roman oppressors. Save us from our next potential exile from the land, as happened with the Jews until their miraculous restoration in 1948. Never before has there been a nation like Israel restored from exile after almost 2,000 years. Who might have imagined that the people of Israel, after almost being completed obliterated by Hitler in the Holocaust, might return to their homeland?

Psalm 122:6 challenges us to pray for the peace, the shalom of Jerusalem. Since the bloody Oct 7th massacre a year ago, it is more important than ever for Zion’s sake that we do not remain silent in our prayer for the people of Israel. Jerusalem is mentioned three times in this passage, Zion twice, and the city once. Biblically speaking, there is both an earthly city of Zion, Jerusalem, and a heavenly city of God, called the new Jerusalem. God cares for both the physical and spiritual. In the book of Revelation, the heavenly city and earthy city of Jerusalem become one when Jesus returns to earth.

In Isaiah 62, vs 2, Israel and the nations are told that “The nations will see your vindication, and all kings your glory; you will be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will bestow.”

How many have actually visited Jerusalem? We went in 1980 and were booked to return to Jerusalem in 2020 when the whole world was locked down. The ultimate glory of Israel is its messiah, Yeshua, Jesus the Christ. Sadly, many Jewish people believe that to believe in Jesus is to abandon their identity as Jews. You can be an atheist Jew, a Buddhist Jew, a new age Jew. Only Jesus is seen by many as verboten. He is only for the Gentiles.  Yet Jesus/Yeshua is the most famous Jewish person who has ever existed.

Speaking of identity, what is your middle name? Do you identify with it? Is it you? How many use your middle name rather than your first name? My dear late mother Lorna actually had Catherine as her first name.  How many of you would like a new name? A new orientation. A new identity.

In 2018, I and over 200 others BC pastors signed the One Accord declaration calling the BC government to get rid of SOGI. In the One Accord, we said that, quote unquote, “We contend that the SOGI message contradicts the Christian truths, disrespects Charter values, and is harmful to school children, their parents, school teachers, and society as a whole,” For some reason, the government back then didn’t listen and doubled-down on the divisive and destructive SoGi agenda. This was the first time, by the way, in Canada that a government didn’t listen. 😉

Instead of SOGI, I would like to share with you today your Spiritual Orientation and Godly identity. Isaiah 62 VS 4 tells us that your new names, orientation and identity ( even more defining than your sexuality or gender) are Hephzibah and Beulah. I checked with our Christian walking group by the way and no one knew what these two names meant apart from being names of Baptist and Alliance Churches. But these two new names are God’s solution for the oppressive darkness around Halloween.

In Isaiah 62 vs 3, Jesus tells Israel and us as the nations that “You will be a crown of splendor in the Lord’s hand, a royal diadem in the hand of your God.”

            God sees Israel as a crown of splendour, a royal diadem which is a royal headband. The good news is that according to Romans 11:19, all the nations through faith in Jesus are grafted into the olive tree of Israel. We the Church have not antisemitically replaced Israel; rather we are mysteriously included. This is very good news! If God could break his covenant promises with Israel, he could do the same with us as the gentile nations. I thank God that he still loves Israel with an everlasting love, even as He calls us to reach the nations with his everlasting love. As Romans 1:16 reminds us, God is a missionary God, to the Jew first and to all the nations.

In Isaiah 62, vs 4, Jesus tells Israel and us as the grafted-in nations: “No longer will they call you Deserted, or name your land Desolate. But you will be called Hephzibah, and your land Beulah; for the Lord will take delight in you, and your land will be married.”

 I recently read JD Vance’s bestseller Hillbilly Elegy where he speaks of profound desertion and abandonment again and again by his father and subsequent stepfathers and boyfriends of his addicted, violent mother. His childhood was a bloody mess that with the help of his grandmother Mamaw and his time in the US marines, he miraculously recovered, even getting a Yale law degree, a stable job and a good marriage and children.  The good news is that JD Vance’s mom recently achieved ten years sobriety through AA & NA. Many addicts nowadays are poly-addicted, not just addicted to alcohol as in the old days.

AA & NA uses the acronym H.A.L.T. (Hungry. Angry. Lonely. And Tired) to describe when we are most vulnerable to temptation and addiction. Desertion is at its core existential loneliness. There is no limit to how stupid we can act when we are experiencing the deep pain of loneliness and forsakenness. Jesus quoted My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? on the cross from the key messianic passage Psalm 22. The word lonely was invented by Shakespeare, coming from the Latin word solus or solitude. Loneliness is the counterfeit of the monastic discipline of solitude and aloneness. For a teenager to not participate in the darkness of Halloween is often to be left deeply alone, and deserted like a fish out of water. Self-isolation is connected to what AA calls the moving cure. When we hide from others, even in plain view, our anxiety and pain temporarily reduce, but always bounce back with greater anxiety and pain.

Bishop Peter often talks about how difficult it is to do community in our individualistic western culture, and yet how vital it is to our spiritual growth. I am grateful how Bishop Peter keeps refocusing us on prayer & community, especially in this increasingly bloody season of Halloween.

Have you noticed how people love to blame and persecute the Jews?  When in doubt, it is always their fault. Think about the Egyptians followed by the Assyrians followed by the Babylonians followed by the Greeks followed by the Romans: none of them treated Israel well. Again and again, the Bible describes how the people of Israel have been exiled from their deserted and desolate land for a season.

But God has never given up on his covenant faithfulness with Israel. Even in exile and brokenness, God calls the Jewish people Hephzibah, which means he still delights in them. Jewish tradition tells us that Hephzibah was the name of Isaiah’s own daughter. The root hafz means “guarding” or “taking care of,” to safeguard.” How many of us would welcome God’s safeguarding, his delight, during this bloody Halloween season?

Don’t by the way confuse Hephzibah with Hezbollah (the “Party of God”), the terrorist group in Lebanon. Hephzibah was the name of King Hezekiah’s wife. Those who are sci-fi buffs will know that Hephzibah is the name of Catwoman or Lady Kitten with the Marvel Comics XMan series. After Christopher Summers, AkA Corsair saved Hephzibah from being eaten alive at a banquet), she fell in love with him, swearing an eternal bond.

We as Hephzibah delight in and love our bridegroom Jesus because he first delighted in and loved us. The good news in the messiah Jesus that God also delights in the nations, the goyim, and God also delights in you individually. He takes pleasure in you. Pastor Steve Doerksen, our White Rock/South Surrey Leadership Prayer Breakfast MC, said on Friday that God is smiling on you. What if on Oct 31^st  during our Prayer Vigil, we contemplated how much Jesus delights in us and smiles on us?

Our other new name Beulah means married. Our sacramental marriage to Jesus is at the heart of true communion.  Ephesians 5:22 says “This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.” Beulah is described by John Bunyan in Pilgrim’s Progress as being on the borders of Heaven. My 47-year marriage with my wife Janice is heavenly; it has brought me much closer to King Jesus. Those of you who are married, never take your spouse for granted. Never stop dating and romancing them. If you want the intimacy of Beulah, you need to spend a lot of quality time with your spouse. Do I hear an Amen? Our All Saints Prayer Vigil starting tonight is Beulah quality time with our bridegroom Jesus.

One of my wife’s love language is quality time, which she sacrificed a lot of it while I was doorknocking for the last nine months.  Since Janice had successful cancer surgery and radiation three years ago, every moment with Janice is a precious gift that I thank Jesus for. Yesterday Janice and I went on a romantic 12-hour date that started with a delicious meal at an AGM with our MP Kerry-Lynne Findlay, and ended with a tasty Subway meal before watching the Kitsilano theatre production Billy Bishop Goes to War. Has anyone seen this play?  A little too much swearing for me, but very well done. Planes fascinate us because both of our dads served in the Air Force in WWII. Remembrance Day at All Saints meant a lot to my late dad when he processed with Ralph Webb, wearing his WWII medals.  Billy Bishop was our top Canadian flying ace in WWI receiving a Victoria Cross for 72 victories. He even fought in the air at Vimy Ridge where my grandfather Vic Hird was in the trenches.  It was Billy Bishop, not Charlie Brown’s Snoopy, who actually fought the top WWI pilot known as the Bloody Red Baron. With a Canadian population of just eight million, our Canadian Armed Forces grew in size during WWI from just 3,000 to a remarkable 650,000 people. 66,000 Canadians made the ultimate sacrifice, including my two great-uncles Harry and Charlie. When Billy Bishop peacefully died at age 62, 25,000 Canadians lined the funeral procession.

The word deserted, by the way, comes from the word desert, meaning left waste, to be empty of people. Have you noticed how cold, wet weather can make Crescent Beach look like a ghost town? Have you ever felt deserted in your Christian Walk? Halloween is often experienced as a heavy, alienating time by people who want to seek first God’s Kingdom.  We are in a battle, a battle over Jerusalem, a battle for the Soul of Canada, a battle for the Soul of BC.

Rejection and desertion are very close. Jesus was both rejected and deserted by almost everybody, except for the women disciples and John.  Teenage Christians often feel great pressure to compromise with evil during the Halloween season in order to avoid being rejected. In Hebrews 13:5, Jesus our bridegroom tells us: “I will never leave you nor forsake you.””

How many have immigrated to Canada? How many have parents or grandparents who were immigrants to Canada? How many of your ancestors came because Canada was seen as the promised land? How many came because they were fleeing oppression? The biblical themes of slavery and oppression in foreign exile are very strong in Isaiah 62. So are the themes of exodus, liberation, and restoration. All of us long to be no longer deserted and desolate especially in this dark time of Halloween

Pastor Ray Johnston of Bayside Church in Sacramento said recently: “If you expect the Christian life to be easy, you will quit when it gets hard.” Never let discouragement and loneliness cause you to give up. The devil, especially during Halloween, loves to exhaust us, isolate us, and distract us. That is one of the key ways he kills marriages, families, churches, and even nations.

You may notice how Bishop Peter talks a lot about the desert, how we are tempted to run away to the desert. Halloween, is one of those times when many believers feel spiritually deserted, when evil seems to be simultaneously glorified and trivialized. It can feel like a spiritual desert. That is why I encouraged you this October 31st to join us at 7pm at the All Saints prayer course. How many would agree that All Saints is an oasis in our BC desert?

In Isaiah 62, vs. 5, Israel and the grafted-in nations are told: “As a young man marries a young woman, so will your Builder marry you; as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.”

Speaking of our new name Beulah, Jesus the Messiah is our bridegroom, and we are his covenantal bride. We are God’s trophy wife. He chose you before anyone could reject you or desert you. Are you married yet to Jesus? Marriage is sacramental and covenantal. God loves to use the sacraments of baptism and communion to help break off the curse of desertion, of abandonment, of god-forsakenness. Sacraments can be a great blessing when received by faith with thanksgiving, particularly during the Halloween season.

Would you like to be married to Jesus? The key, as Bishop Peter keeps telling us, is surrender. Have you surrendered your independence and your will to Jesus? You could do that this morning. As John Bevere, author of The Bait of Satan often says, many people however would rather date Jesus rather than forsake all others and be married to him alone. We love our idols too much to give them up. For many people, Halloween is a very powerful idol.  It is unthinkable for many to renounce Halloween, even to just renounce the darker aspects of Halloween. They may think that they are being disloyal to their parents’ memories who may have taken them out trick or treating.

In Isaiah 62, vs 5, Jesus said: “I have posted watchmen on your walls, Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth.”

Bishop Peter is a watchman on the wall who is never silent sharing the good news and challenging people to turn from darkness. Our extended times of prayer at All Saints are time of the intercessors nightly watching on the wall. I am looking forward this evening to our latest nightly time of prayer as we are trusting God for our All Saints renovation. Let’s not give God or even ourselves any rest, especially during the gross darkness of Halloween. Did you know that spiritual renewal and restoration in Spanish is called renovacion?

Have you noticed that the darkness of Halloween is getting darker and bloodier? The Bible in Isaiah 60:2 talks about both darkness and gross darkness. While doorknocking, it sometimes looked like I have stumbled on an ISIS or Hamas massacre, strewn with decapitated bloody heads, hands and feet. God, by the way, is passionate about establishing and protecting Israel as the praise of the earth. Through passionate prayer, we can make a difference in protecting Israel from its many enemies. When prayerful revival breaks out as with the Jesus movement, that is when many Jewish people open their hearts to the Messiah Yeshua.

In Isaiah 62, vs 8-9, Israel and the grafted-in nations are told: “The Lord has sworn by his right hand and by his mighty arm: “Never again will I give your grain as food for your enemies, and never again will foreigners drink the new wine for which you have toiled; but those who harvest it will eat it and praise the Lord, and those who gather the grapes will drink it in the courts of my sanctuary.”

God’s desire is that both Israel and faithful nations experience biblical sowing and reaping.  How many of us want more of the new wine and Harvest during this Halloween season? Surrender is the key to spiritual Harvest.

In Isaiah 62, vs 10, Jesus says to Israel and the grafted-in nations:  “Pass through, pass through the gates! Prepare the way for the people. Build up, build up the highway! Remove the stones. Raise a banner for the nations.”

God is always calling the people of Israel home from exile. In Jesus, we are all being called home. Are you willing to come back home during the darkness of Halloween? What is holding you back from passing through the gates, from building up the highway for others getting free?

In Isaiah 62, vs. 11, Israel and the grafted-in nations are told: “The Lord has made proclamation to the ends of the earth: “Say to Daughter Zion, ‘See, your Savior comes! See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him.’ ”

Israel’s greatest need is to realize that their Saviour Yeshua/ Jesus is coming again. All of us need this awareness. As we say in the liturgy, Christ had died. Christ had risen. Christ will come again. Jesus alone can save us from the gross darkness of Halloween. Are you willing to ask Jesus to save you this morning?  What do you need saving from in your life?

In Isaiah 62, vs 12, Jesus speaks of Israel and the grafted-in nations: “They will be called the Holy People, the Redeemed of the Lord; and you will be called Sought After, the City No Longer Deserted.”

Jesus is seeking for you as his Holy Redeemed City to choose the way of holiness, to say yes to the light and no to the bloody darkness.  In this Halloween season, are you willing to die to some of your so-called rights that we Westerners take for granted? Once we surrender our will to the crucified Christ, we are crucified with Him. Every right we had was nailed to that cross. What rights are you willing to surrender, to lay on the altar? How about the right to be offended, the right to be bitter, the right to be angry, the right to hang onto unforgiveness, the right to criticize, how about even the right to be right? How about the right to do Halloween just like you have always done, no matter how dark it may get?

How many would like to no longer be deserted? What is God wanting to restore in your life even during the darkness of Halloween? How many want a restoration of your first love for Jesus? How many want a fresh assurance that God delights in you as his bride? I am convinced that in the increasingly bloody nature of Halloween, we need to be pleading the blood of Jesus, especially over our children and grandchildren. What can wash away Halloween? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make Canada whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Let us pray.