Rev Darrow's Sermons

The Bible and How we use it

2012-01-22T00:09:00.000-05:00

In the last few years, I have been studying and training for a special form of ministry called Spiritual Direction. Part of what I feel God is calling me to do, is help others take time to pay attention to God. Foundational to helping others slow down, and tune in to what God is, and what God is saying, is the faith that God loves all of us. God is working in our lives, and has things to tell us.

God’s love is not limited by our human ideas of who is faithful and who is not. God loves every person, unconditionally. We are all precious members of God’s family. It is humans that create divisions between branches of the family. We divide ourselves up with borders, cultures, languages, and religions, but God loves us all the same. I don’t think that God looks at us and sees Hindus and Muslims and Christians and Jews, or Bahai, or Sikhs, or Jains, or Buddhists, or Taoists, or Confucianists, or believers or non-believers. God just loves us all.

The more time I spend in quiet prayer, trying to be with God, and the more I work with people who are prayerfully seeking after God, the more convinced I am that these things are true and real. There is a God. God is mysterious and confusing, and largely beyond our understanding, but God is real. God wants good things for us. God wants us to experience love, and acceptance, and forgiveness, and peace. God wants us to pass this message on to others.

This is the Good News that Jesus came to teach. This is the Good News that draws us here, and feeds us, comforts us, energizes us, and then sends us back out into the world.

Serving as a spiritual director does not mean I have all the answers about how people should live, any more than being a preacher does. My job is to point people towards the real source of the answers, towards the love, and acceptance, and peace of God. The best thing I can do is to encourage people in their own journeys with, and towards God.

I love the story of the Magi. They go on a spiritual journey, and are prepared to cross national borders, and boundaries of language, and culture, and religion. It’s quite amazing to me that this story was preserved in the Bible, because it is actually quite subversive. To explain what I mean by that, I need to say a few things about what the Bible is, and how it has often been used.

The Bible is not actually a book. It is more like a collection, or small library of writings from a wide variety of sources, gathered over a very long time. We can divide this library, into 2 smaller collections. One is what we call the Hebrew scriptures, or the Old Testament. This part contains writings held sacred by the Jewish religion. Because Jesus was born and raised, and educated as a Jew, some Hebrew Scriptures were known to him, but some were not. The Old Testament was not brought together as we now have it, until long after the time of Jesus.

For hundreds of years before and after the time of Jesus, most Jewish people would have heard only portions of texts read from scrolls in the Jerusalem temple, or in a local synagogue. Only scholars and those training to be priests or rabbis could read the scrolls for themselves. The scrolls were precious hand-copied document. They were expensive and time consuming to produce.

For most people, relating to scripture was a very public event. Worship leaders read from the scrolls, and explained what they read to the congregation. For most of the faithful, the scriptures were just one of the ways they learned about their religion, and about God. They also learned from the customs of their culture, from sermons, from stories, and from songs they sang.

After the time of Jesus, when his first followers met to break bread, share wine, to pray, and to worship God, they did not have Bibles as we know them. In the first few generations of this new movement, most lessons of faith were passed along orally. When Paul began travelling as a missionary, he wrote letters to the congregations he started, and some of these were preserved, passed along, and read over and over again. Within a few decades, people in different places began collecting stories about Jesus, and memories of things he had said and done. These Good News writings, or Gospels, were read out loud in worship time. Congregations had small collections of writings, which they used along with their customs, and traditions, and stories and songs, to teach people about their faith, and to point them towards God.

There was no consensus about which writings were considered worth sharing, for at least the first 300 years of Christianity. Believers in Egypt might hear teachings about Jesus that were different from those heard in Jerusalem, or Rome, or in Greece, or Ethiopia. This can help us understand why the four Gospels we now have do not always agree about events in Jesus’ life.

It was not until Christianity became an official religion of the Roman Empire, that efforts were made to standardize ideas taught about God and Jesus, and what was considered scripture. Under the direction of Emperor Constantine the church was organized very much like a branch of the government. Ranks of church officialdom were modelled after the army. The Emperor called church leaders together to hammer out official teachings, and the list of approved texts. He wanted them all to have the same marching orders. The goal was something like McDonald’s- to deliver the same product at every franchise, all over the world.

There are gospels and letters other than what we now have in our Bibles, that were thought of as sacred in some Christian communities, but did not make the final cut. The church leaders summoned by the Emperor brought their lists, and debated the merits of each text.

This all happened over 16 centuries ago. Not all the details are clear, but scholars suggest 4 criteria were used to decide what texts would be kept. The first was attribution- if the writing was thought to be by an early apostle, or to have come from a community where they taught, or was at least based on their teaching and preaching, it was taken more seriously. This can be a bit fuzzy. Claims of authorship were rooted in tradition, and were hard to prove.

The second criteria was acceptance. Was this document already widely accepted by the major Christian communities, or at least by those represented in the debate?

The third criteria was liturgical use. Was the document read publicly when Christian communities gathered for worship?

The fourth criteria was consistency. Did the document fit in with the ideas about Jesus, and God, and with theology already being taught?

There was ample room for prejudice, politics, pride and other less than noble human traits to get into the mix. Do you remember how King Herod saw the birth of a new King of the Jews as a possible threat to his power? There is something about being put in charge of a kingdom that can make a person act in protective, territorial ways.

Could a group of church leaders who now answered to the Roman Emperor include texts that encouraged resistance to worldly powers? Would a gathering of all male teachers and preachers include writings that presented a more equal view of women?

Would the leaders of this growing multi-national corporation be comfortable including writings that suggested that it was possible to know God, without following Jesus?

That’s why I think that the story of the Magi is kind of subversive. In the early centuries of the Christian church, the two major celebrations were Easter and Epiphany. Easter was actually celebrated at every Sabbath.

Epiphany had the prominence that we now give to Christmas. The story was often used to say that just as the magi travelled from distant countries to bow down to Jesus, a time would come when people of all races would bow down to the one true religion, and become followers of Jesus. A modern name for this is Christian Triumphalism. This is the “we’re right, and you have to join us or go to hell, literally” approach to evangelism.

In our day, this “my way or the hot way” approach is often supported by claiming that the Bible is the perfect and complete expression of God’s word. It elevates the Bible from being one of the tools we use to point to God, to some kind of supernatural object, that we are almost expected to worship. This form of reverence for a false idol is called “bibliolatry”.

But just like God tells the magi in a dream to go by another way, to avoid Herod, it is possible to read their story in a different way. These wise pilgrims set out on a journey, in response to prompting by God. They did not have the Old Testament or the New Testament, or any testament that we know about. They looked to the sky, or consulted the ancient teachings of their own traditions. They meditated, they prayed, in the ways that they had been taught. And God was with them!

The Magi may have been priests of a religion rooted in Persia called Zoroastrianism. We have no way of knowing that for sure. But we do know that they were not Jewish, and they were definitely not Christian. There is no indication from the story in Matthew’s Gospel, or from any traditions about the wise men that they ever left their faith, and converted to become followers of Jesus.

God was at work in their lives. They could pray, and pay attention to God in the ways they had learned, with the customs of their own people. God did not seem to need them to believe certain things, or belong to a certain race, or country, or religion. God is in no way limited by our human divisions. God actually loved them. God had plans for them, hopes for them, and work for them to do. Just like us. Amen

“Love, Compassion and Equality” Martin Luther King Sunday

2012-01-14T21:47:00.000-05:00

Twenty-five years ago I lived on a Christian communal farm in Southern Georgia called Koinonia. It is the birthplace of Habitat for Humanity, which helps people achieve the dream of decent affordable housing. But long before all of that, Koinonia was a radical faith-based experiment in racial integration. It began in 1942 when Clarence Jordan, his wife Florence, and their friends Martin and Mabel England, all deeply committed Christians, pooled their resources, and bought a large farm in Sumter County, not far from Plains, Georgia.

Their farm was a demonstration plot for the Kingdom of God, modelled after the early Christian community described in the Book of Acts. They shared the proceeds of the farm with all who lived and worked there, on the basis of need. When they hired seasonal workers, they paid them fairly, and equally, regardless of the colour of their skin. Visitors were always welcomed for a meal, and the communal table was the same way- all were welcome, and all were treated with respect. A consequence of having people working side by side as equals, and sharing meals, was that they made steps in getting over seeing only their differences, and began to view each other with compassion.

To ignore the racial and class distinctions that so dominated the American South was a radical act that drew both positive and negative attention. People committed to the equality of all of God’s people came to volunteer on a short term basis. Some decided to join the experiment. Koinonia connected with groups and individuals in the South who acted in faith to break down the walls between people caused by racism and poverty.

Many white people in the area were opposed to the experiment, and tried to force these folks to sell their farm, and leave. Groups like the Ku Klux Klan were quite vocal, and demonstrative in their efforts, through most of the 1950’s and into the 1960’s. Clarence Jordan received moral support, and help from people like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Koinonia has in its archives a letter from King, advising Jordan on where he might obtain car insurance, when none of the area brokers would have anything to do with him.

There were times when volunteers from the northern United States would come to keep watch, and stand as a human barrier between the community, and those who wanted them to leave.

The farmhouse in which Clarence and Florence Jordan raised their family lived still has bullet-holes in the walls. I lived in that house for 3 months in 1986 with two people from Switzerland, and someone from Oregon, all of us volunteer interns on the farm. I learned the basic teachings of Koinonia, which were very much in the spirit of Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Martin Luther King, Jr. They believe in, and live by, three basic ideas: All humankind are related under God's parenthood. Love is the alternative to violence. We share to help those who are in need.

I was privileged to spend a lot of time with rural black folks. I worked in a small general store. I drove a school bus for the farm summer camp, and twice a week we took kids to a public swimming pool in Americus, the nearest town. I had the experience of being the only white person in the pool. The white folks still took their kids to the pool at a private country club.

I helped in the farm library, and taught basic literacy classes. I spent time on the porches of the tiny houses, some more like shacks, of black families, while volunteering with a voter registration project. Back then, the majority of black people in rural Georgia still did not vote.

I was thousands of miles from home, and totally out of my element, but there were times when things seemed oddly familiar. Partly because people are people, wherever you go. Kids are kids, and families are families, and there is more about us that is similar, than is really different. But there was another reason why things felt familiar, that I did not figure out, until I got back to Canada.

I moved from Southern Georgia to Northwestern Manitoba, where I was posted for a year as a student minister in a small town United Church. After a few weeks I began to realize that Swan River was a lot like a little town in rural Georgia. There was a good side of the tracks, where mostly white people lived, and there was the bad side of the tracks- where the houses were smaller, and mostly rental units, and where the majority of the tenants were aboriginal people.

Swan River is a government service centre, and gateway to the reserves in the north. I became friends with some of the public health nurses. I was sometimes invited to join them when they drove up to a reserve to run a baby clinic, or do vaccinations. The reserves I visited were, for the most part, desperately poor and ugly. I learned that in the west, and perhaps in other parts of Canada, the boundaries of reserve land were drawn around land that might be good for farming or forestry, leaving the native people with the rocky, swampy parts that were of little use to European settlers.

To me, the reserves in Northern Manitoba, looked and felt a lot like the Fort William Indian Band reserve near where I grew up in Thunder Bay. It was my memory of how it felt to be on that reserve that were in the back of my mind, when I visited some of those black families. The feeling I was picking up on in some of those houses in Georgia, and in Northern Manitoba, was the absence of hope. The long term effects of being looked down upon as second class, of being called stupid, and lazy, and dirty, of coming from generations of people locked into poverty, and being barred from opportunities available to others.

We have been hearing lately about a settlement on James Bay called Attawapiskat. In October the band council declared a state of emergency because of a severe housing crisis. In November, Charlie Angus, the federal MP for the area, and Gilles Bisson, the provincial MPP visited, and brought a video camera. The scenes I am about to show you are just a brief glimpse into life at Attawapiskat. What struck me as I watched the footage is that the people who live up there are just people. I asked myself, what if, instead of being born in Thunder Bay, I had been born in Attawapiskat? What would my house have looked like? Would I have ever been able to imagine a life different from what we are about to see?

(Show clip from Attawapiskat.)

According to the website of MP Charlie Angus, when he visited there were just under 2000 people living in Attawapiskat. He wrote: “there are five families living in tents; 19 families living in sheds without running water; 35 families living in houses needing serious repair; 128 families living in houses condemned from black mould and failing infrastructure; 118 families living with relatives (often 20 people in a small home); there are 90 people living in a construction trailer. There's a need for 268 houses just to deal with the immediate backlog of homelessness.”

As long as there are people living in such soul wearing, degrading circumstances, there will be a need for prophetic voicesIn 1964, in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, Martin Luther King said:

“The well-off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst. The poor in our countries have been shut out of our minds, and driven from the mainstream of our societies, because we have allowed them to become invisible. Just as nonviolence exposed the ugliness of racial injustice, so must the infection and sickness of poverty be exposed and healed - not only its symptoms but its basic causes…..

The rich nations must use their vast resources of wealth to develop the underdeveloped, school the unschooled, and feed the unfed. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for "the least of these". Deeply etched in the fiber of our religious tradition is the conviction that men are made in the image of God and that they are souls of infinite metaphysical value, the heirs of a legacy of dignity and worth. If we feel this as a profound moral fact, we cannot be content to see men hungry, to see men victimized with starvation and ill health when we have the means to help them….

In the final analysis, the rich must not ignore the poor because both rich and poor are tied in a single garment of destiny. All life is interrelated, and all men are interdependent. The agony of the poor diminishes the rich, and the salvation of the poor enlarges the rich. “ Amen

Renewing our Faith

2012-01-07T10:52:00.000-05:00

I have a clip to show you this morning from the movie “Toy 2”. Woody, the Cowboy, has been toy-napped by a collector, who plans to sell him to a museum. The collector locks Woody into a room which contains other valuable toys. As soon as the collector leaves, Woody springs into action, looking for a way to escape. But before he can do that, Woody meets Bullseye the horse, Jesse the cowgirl, and the old prospector, Stinky Pete. View clip:

Stinky Pete is my favourite character in this scene. I like his name, but I also like what he says. He shows Woody great compassion when he states, “He doesn’t know who he is!”

In the next moments, Woody’s new friends show him things he did not know about himself. It turns out that Woody the Cowboy was a famous television star. The room is filled with Woody memorabilia- that give him clues to just how big a star he was, and give the movie viewers the background to understand why Woody would have been toy-napped in the first place.

Toy Story 2 is a sequel. Successful movie sequels remind the viewers of what they liked about the first movie, but also go beyond the familiar. Sometimes the writers do this by offering the next episode in the hero’s life. Another way is to provide back-story- to show things that happened to the characters before we met them in the first place. This seems to work best if we actually like the characters, or are at least curious about them. Then we are willing to follow them as they have their latest adventure, and along the way, learn something about themselves.

That’s something else that every good story needs. The hero has to do more than simply have an adventure. They also need to solve a problem, to learn something, and to be in some way transformed, changed by the experience.

Most often, the learning and transforming happens as the hero interacts with other characters. They offer clues to the mystery.

Jesse and Stinky Pete are there to let Woody know that his story is much bigger than he ever imagined. This happens for Jesus, in the first clip I showed you this morning.

Jesus went to the Jordan River, to the place where John the Baptist was at work. People were lined up to hear John as he preached, and to be baptized by him. John preached about the Kingdom of God. He invited his listeners to see that beyond their individual lives, they are each part of a much bigger story- the story of God’s plan for the people of Israel, and God’s plan for the whole world. John also called people to repent- to turn away from their selfishness, to live faithfully, according to the teachings of the Jewish religion.

Jesus was interested in the story that John is telling about God’s Kingdom. He watched as John invited people to begin a new chapter in their lives. When it was Jesus’ turn to stand in the river water, and be baptised, John did for Jesus what Jesse and Stinky Pete did for Woody. John showed Jesus that he is part of a much bigger story.

When we gather as a community of faith, we become reminders to each other that we are part of a bigger story- the ongoing story, with many sequels, of God at work in the world, loving us, and calling us to turn our lives around. Each of us has a part to play in this big story about God’s love. Amen

Forgiveness, and other impossible things

2012-01-03T12:42:00.000-05:00

I am going to show you a clip from the 1991 movie “City Slickers”. Three men who have been friends since childhood get away once a year for an adventure. They step outside their normal lives to do something different. This time they go to a dude ranch, and work as cowboys on a cattle drive. Phil, the oldest of the three is also using the time to take stock of his life, and come to terms with a big mess he has made. In the scene we will watch, Phil has just risked his own life to take a gun away from a crazed, drunk cowboy, who was threatening his friends. His best friend, Mitch, played by Billy Crystal, is concerned for Phil. It may be that the courage he showed is actually recklessness, and that he is feeling so miserable that he is in danger of hurting himself. Mitch talks with Phil, and offers him the hope that we all need at times. View clip: (shown under a public performance licence negotiated through the Hamilton Conference Office of the United Church of Canada)

Not everyone finds themselves in the kind of rock-bottom place that Phil seems to be in. Phil had an affair with one of the young women who worked in the grocery store he managed. He has broken faith with his wife and children, and he has lost his job, because his father-in-law was his boss. He has a lot of work to do before he can feel good about himself again. He will need to seek the forgiveness of the people he has hurt. He will need to find a way to forgive himself. His friend Mitch is a kind of Christ-figure in this scene, with his suggestion of a do-over.

Here is a definition of forgiveness from the author Frederick Buechner:

“To forgive somebody is to say one way or another, “You have done something unspeakable, and by all rights I should call it quits between us. Both my pride and my principles demand no less. However, although I make no guarantee that I will be able to forget what you’ve done and though we may both carry the scars for life, I refuse to let it stand between us, I still want you for my friend.” (Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, page 28-29)

Evelyn and James Whitehead, in their book Shadows of the Heart: A Spirituality of the Painful Emotions, say that “forgiving is not the same thing as forgetting. Forgiveness knows that hurt has been sustained. But in forgiving we respond to the person not in terms of the hurt they have inflicted but in terms of who they are beyond that pain.” (page 84-85)

I mentioned that Mitch acts as a kind of Christ-figure. One of the ways he does that is to show loving concern, and acceptance to his friend, even though he does not agree with the choices he has made. But Mitch does not say to Phil, “I forgive you.” That would fall flat, and actually not be very helpful.

Phil will need to seek forgiveness from his wife and family, and others he has directly hurt. That will not happen easily. Forgiveness is rarely instantaneous. Hurts have to heal, and trust has to be rebuilt. People who have been hurt need to see evidence that things will change, rather than returning to the way they were before.

Relationships do not always survive the damage that is done when trust is broken. But the people involved need to find a way to live beyond the hurt, that does not leave them trapped in their own hurt, anger, and bitterness.

Those who cause hurt need to find a way to forgive themselves, and not define themselves only in terms of the pain they have inflicted. They need to be able to live the rest of their lives in a bigger way. That is the struggle that Phil is caught in.

Those who have been hurt need to find a way to let go of their anger, their bitterness, and their fear of being hurt again, or they may miss a lot of the best parts of the rest of their lives. The feelings of betrayal, and anger, and the sense of injustice that come with being hurt, are real, and legitimate, but unless a person can find their way beyond those feelings, they may become a prisoner of those feelings.

There is an old folk tale about a farmer who was out working in his field when a stranger approached him and asked, “What kind of people live in the next town down the road?”

The farmer replied, “What kind of people live in the place you just left?”

The traveler said, “They were horrible people. Dishonest, selfish and inconsiderate!”

The farmer looked the traveler in the eye and said, “I am sorry to tell you that’s probably what you will find in this town, too!”

The stranger was muttering and moaning to himself as he walked away. Later the same day, another traveler came by, and when he saw the farmer working in his field, stopped to chat. He asked, “What kind of people live in this next town?”

The farmer replied, “What kind of people live in the place you just left?”

The stranger said, “They were like people everywhere. Some of them had problems. Some could be moody. On the whole, they were thoughtful, friendly, and kind. I hated to leave them.”

The farmer offered his hand to greet the man, smiled, and said, “I’m pleased to say that this is about how you will find folks here.”

The traveler returned the handshake, and the smile, and headed into the town that would become his new home.

Donna read us a parable about forgiveness from Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus told the story of the servant of a king who owes his master a huge sum of money, but is unable to pay. This parable reminds us that in some versions of the Lord’s Prayer, it says, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” His master forgives the debt, which means that he has relieved him of his obligation to repay the money owed. The servant has been offered forgiveness. But even so, when a fellow servant who owes him a debt asks for patience, he refuses, and has the person put in jail.

The king hears about the servant’s behaviour, and calls him to account. He reverses his earlier decision to forgive the debt, and hands him over to the jailers, who are to torture him until he pays.

Parables like this one are not meant to be taken literally. Parables were always told to get people’s attention, and to provoke them to think, and feel, and connect with the characters in the story. Many people in Jesus’ original audience would have had experience with the consequences of owing more money than they could possibly re-pay. In their time, tax-collectors working on behalf of the Roman Empire would have soldiers at their beck and call, to help them collect.

I don’t think that Jesus is telling us that this is the way God works. He is not saying that God is an angry, judgmental king looking for a reason to punish us. In reality, only a tyrant, or a bully, would in one breath, say that all was forgiven, and in the next, order the person to be tortured.

I think that the motive behind Jesus’ story is to give a glimpse into the heart of the servant who was offered forgiveness of his debts, but who does not pass on that kindness to the one who owes him a debt. Somehow, the message of freedom did not sink in for this person. Jesus, I think, wants us to see that forgiveness is a gift to be passed along, rather than hoarded.

Maybe there is a distinction to be made between receiving and accepting forgiveness. I have talked to people who were convicted of a criminal offense, and who went through the process of applying for a legal pardon. Even though their name has been cleared, and the legal system has pardoned them, they can still feel guilty for what they did- unless they have found the way to forgive themselves.

I called this morning’s teaching time “Forgiveness, and other impossible things” for three reasons. The first reason is that forgiveness is such an important, and huge topic, that it is impossible for me to cover all that can be said in one short sermon. Another reason is that I am far from being an expert on the topic, and need to learn a lot more. My third reason for saying that forgiveness is impossible, is that on our own, without help, forgiving others, and forgiving ourselves, it is, if not impossible, at least extremely difficult work. We absolutely need God’s help to do it. We may also need help from other people.

I have an excellent book that has helped many people with a process that helps them both forgive, and to feel forgiven. It compares the stages of forgiveness to the stages of grief- suggesting that every time we hurt someone, or are hurt by another, it literally causes grief. I love the title of the book, which is “Don’t Forgive Too Soon: Extending the two hands that heal”. One of the first things the authors say in this book is that we can learn ways to ask for, and to receive the gift of forgiveness, but that it really is a gift, something that God gives.

I think this is what Mitch is saying to his friend Phil in the movie. A “do-over” is actually possible. Not that a do-over will be easy, but that it is possible. Amen

What is your Christmas Story?

2011-12-26T12:59:00.000-05:00

Last year on Christmas Eve I talked about how we actually have 2 very different stories of the birth of Jesus. Over the centuries, and under the influence of Christmas pageants, carols, movies, and television specials, we have blended them together into one story. If you read the stories as found in the beginning chapters of Matthew’s Gospel, and then in Luke’s Gospel, you will see what I mean.

In Matthew, Joseph is the first person to learn the news about the coming baby. He has a dream about an angel, that tells him not to be afraid to wed Mary, who is pregnant. In Luke, it is Mary that gets the news first. She meets an angel while she is awake.

Luke’s story is the one we probably know best. It is the one that describes Mary and Joseph travelling to Bethlehem, finding shelter in a stable, and being visited by shepherds. When we do a Christmas pageant, after the shepherds leave, we know that the wise ones from the East are on their way. But in Luke’s version, there are no wise men, or kings, or anyone else from the east. There are just the shepherds.

It is in Matthew’s version that we meet the wise ones, the magi from the east. But in Matthew’s version, there is no stable, no manger, and no shepherds. The magi follow the star to a house, which is probably in Nazareth, not Bethlehem.

Two different stories. For the first 300 years or so after Jesus’ time, people did not have the Bible the way we have it. Different communities had their own collections of writings, and stories were passed down orally from generation to generation. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire some of these writings were collected, and bound together. We call the Bible a book, but it is actually more like a library, of writings gathered from a variety of sources, over a long period. So it is not surprising that quite often that the story of an event in Jesus’ life is told in variant ways, with major differences in the details.

This can be quite upsetting if you are taught to take it all as literally true, and you discover that you can’t because of all the obvious contradictions. I remember being blown away by this one day when I sat down to collect the names of the 12 disciples, and actually came up with about 16.

What we have tended to do is mash the stories together. I guess that helps when you are putting on a Christmas pageant, and you need as many characters as you can get, so everyone can have a part. The slides you have been looking at tonight are from our Outdoor Nativity play.

Tonight I want to talk about two other Christmas stories. There is the story that the world around us seems to want to sell us, and there is the story that draws us here, to a church on Christmas Eve.

The other day I while I was driving to the church I heard a commercial on the radio that asked the question, “Don’t you think you deserve a new car for Christmas?” I think it was an ad for Lexus. But this was a reminder that in the commercials we see and hear at this time of year, Christmas is about being well fed, well dressed, having a great haircut, looking young and fit, having happy friends and a family that gets along, and all the money in the world, to buy all the things that will make you and your loved ones happy. It is about a Christmas you can put on your credit card, enjoy now, and pay for later. In the commercials, I have noticed lately, there are no sad people, no one is sick, no one is dying, no one is poor. No one is lonely or scared, and nobody is homeless, or living in a war zone. Everyone is safe, and secure, wealthy, young, and powerful.

This is the Christmas story we are being sold. It is a major industry. Every year around the time of American Thanksgiving we hear about Black Friday, and are reminded that a huge sector of the economy depends upon us getting out there and doing our part to keep the corporations going, by buying as much as we can- whether or not we actually need any of it.

Don’t get me wrong. I love giving and getting presents. I am at the stage of life where it is actually way more fun to give things than get them- but I still like both. If someone were to give me a new Lexus, I promise I would make every effort to enjoy it. But I don’t think it would fill me with joy.

I think that we are being sold temporary happiness, in the place of real joy. The things that we can buy or sell, can make us feel happy, at least until the new car smell fades, or we get the first scratch or dent. Joy is something deeper than happiness. Joy is something we can have, even in the real world, in our real lives, where there is sadness, and sickness, and loneliness, and fear, and where there is hardship, and poverty, and war, and death- all the things they can’t show us in tv commercials for shiny new stuff.

The Christmas story that draws us to this place, on this night, is the story about God’s love alive and at work in the world. The world into which Jesus comes as a vulnerable infant, totally reliant upon the love and commitment of the people closest to him in order to live.

The story that draws us here is about Joseph, who trusts the angel’s word that it will be okay to wed Mary. The story that draws us here is about Mary, who places her trust in God, and believes that everything is going to work out, even though she is young, poor, unmarried, and pregnant.

What Mary knows, even at her young age, and what draws us here to this place, is the real story. It’s the story about God who loves us, and is with us in this world, where everything is not as shiny and new like in the commercials, but it’s real, and it’s where we live. It’s about God, the source of all the love that makes life livable, and truly joyous, even when it’s hard.

That’s the story the shepherds were drawn to, in the middle of a cold night. The angels told them that they need not be afraid. God was with them. God wanted to be with them- even the shepherds, who the rest of the world looked down as dirty, and common, and in need of a bath.

It’s also the story the wise men from the east were drawn to. They are sometimes called kings, but more likely they were something like court astrologers. They were wealthy enough to travel, in a time when most people never went further than 50 miles from the place where they were born. They had expensive gifts to offer the Christ child, but were wise enough to know that some things cannot be bought with gold, and frankincense, and myrhh- or even a Lexus.

We are people who end up living somewhere between these two stories of Christmas- between the worldly promise of shiny things, and the heavenly promise of holy things. The wondrous, amazing, joyful truth about Christmas, is that right smack in the middle of the worldly, and the heavenly, between the shiny and the holy, God has come to live with us. Merry Christmas.

Children of Promise: Jesus

2011-12-17T16:33:00.000-05:00

Her name was Mary Beth. She was not the most popular girl in her high school, but she had friends. She ran cross country on the school team. She was a member of the Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship, a small group of evangelical Christians who met once a week after school, for prayer and Bible study. She was an above average student, who worked hard and paid attention. Her teachers liked her.

The last time she was seen by her classmates was in the spring of her Grade 12 year. Mary Beth just disappeared. One day she was there, and the next day the vice principal and one of the caretakers were emptying her locker.

Over the summer, Amy, one of Mary Beth’s friends got a letter. Mary Beth wrote that her parents had pulled her out of school, and moved her to live with an uncle and aunt, in a different province. Amy wrote back, and they kept up a correspondence.

Mary Beth finished Grade 12 in her new school before she really began to show. That December she gave birth, and her uncle and aunt were helping to raise the little girl. Mary Beth’s parents refused to let her come home, and wanted nothing to do with the baby.

I remember several stories like Mary Beth’s from my high school years. Even back then, I noticed that it was always the young woman who disappeared. The young man, and we usually had a pretty good idea of who he was, stayed in school. Nobody had to empty his locker.

Last week when we heard part of the story of John the Baptist, we skipped over the part in which Elizabeth, John’s mother, is visited by her relative Mary. This happened before John was born, and the well-known part of the story is where Elizabeth says to Mary, “As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. ⁴⁵ Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her! ”

In Luke’s Gospel, what then follows is Mary’s Song, which we also call “The Magnificat”. This is the song of praise, that is believed to have been modelled after Hannah’s Song, from the Old Testament.

The Magnificat is often heard at this time of year. It contains a powerful message about God’s promise of a great reversal of fortune. Mary sings,

“My soul glorifies the Lord
⁴⁷ and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
⁴⁸ for he has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
⁴⁹ for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
holy is his name.
⁵⁰ His mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to generation.
⁵¹ He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
⁵² He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
⁵³ He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty. “

Mary sang that God has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. As a young, unmarried woman, Mary had good reason to describe herself as in a humble state. When the fact of her pregnancy was added in, Mary’s already low social status dropped even lower.

Mary was engaged, promised to Joseph. Some scholars suggest that even at this stage in their relationship, Joseph would already have what amounted to property rights over Mary. In many cultures, a marriage contract was essentially about transferring a woman from the inventory of one household to another. (This thinking carried over into the language of many traditional Christian weddings. The minister asks, “Who gives this woman to be married to this man?” Can you give you something, or someone away, if you don’t own them?”)

Scholars have also suggested that in the culture of the time, Joseph would have had the right to break the marriage contract. Any dowry, or bride-price he had paid, would be returned to him, if it became known that Mary was “damaged goods”.

To our ears, this may all sound harsh, but in that time and place, families wanted sons, not daughters. A son was an asset who could inherit the property of his father, and carry on a legacy, and care for his mother, and the rest of the household. A daughter could not inherit property, because she was property. She would be a drain on her father’s household, until a marriage was arranged. Her value as a bride would have to do with producing male children with unquestionable right to inherit. Any blemish on the woman’s reputation made her less valuable.

Right after Mary’s Song of praise, and just before the description of the birth of John the Baptist, there is a single line in Luke’s Gospel that jumped out at me this week, as I was pondering Mary’s situation. This is the line:

“Mary stayed with Elizabeth for about three months and then returned home.”

I wonder if Mary had been sent by her family, to be out of sight, while they sorted out what to do with her. The story as we have it in Luke’s Gospel tells us that Mary was quick to accept the news that she would be the mother of a special child. Mary has long been a model of faithful acceptance of God’s will, and reliance upon God. She seemed ready to trust that all that was happening to her, and all that would follow, was willed by God, and that everything would work out.

Would her family, and friends, and neighbours be as open and accepting? Would Joseph, and his family, and friends, and neighbours?

So I wonder if Mary was sent off to her relatives, an old temple priest and his childless wife, because she needed a safe place to be, out of sight from her own community?

In the Gospel reading for this morning, from the first chapter of Matthew, we heard that,

“Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹ Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet^[^e^] did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

²⁰ But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹ She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus,^[f] because he will save his people from their sins.”

One of the common elements in the stories we have heard, over the past few weeks, about Children of Promise from the Bible, is that in the story of each child of promise there is a woman of scandal.

Isaac, son of Abraham, was born to Sarah, who had never been able to conceive a child. I have mentioned before that this was seen as a hint that a woman was guilty of some secret sin. In order to satisfy her husband’s desire for a male heir, Sarah had encouraged him to sleep with a woman named Hagar, who was Sarah’s maid. This story is not exactly Sunday School material.

Moses was born to a Hebrew woman named Jochabed. She and her husband lived as slaves in Egypt during a time in which the Pharaoh had decreed that all Hebrew baby boys were to be killed. Jochabed hid her baby as long as she could, and then set him floating in a basket amongst the reeds near the bank of the Nile River. Moses was found, and adopted by the daughter of the Pharoah, who also defied her father’s command to kill the child.

Samuel was born to Hannah, who sang the original song of praise at his birth. Hannah had been taunted by one of her husband’s other wives for failing to produce a son. Even when Hannah went to the temple to pray about her problem, the priest questioned her character, and accused her of being drunk in worship.

John the Baptist, the child of promise we looked at last week, was born to Elizabeth long after normal child-bearing years. Elizabeth was married to Zechariah, who was described as a faithful priest. Elizabeth would have lived their whole marriage under a cloud of whispered scandal- what was her secret sin, that God was punishing by keeping her barren all these years? Poor Zechariah, such a good man, married to the likes of Elizabeth!

Mary, the young woman who would become the mother of Jesus, considered herself to be blessed. These Bible stories seem to be telling us something about the difference between how God sees people, and how the world may label them. The Bible contains all these stories about women who seem mired in scandal, marked with blemished reputations, who are exactly the people God chooses to bring hope, and light, and love, and joy into the world. This is such good news for those of us who have not lived perfect lives, have made mistakes, who done things we are not proud of. We are exactly the kind of people God wants. Thanks be to God. Amen

Children of Promise: John the Baptist

2011-12-17T10:36:00.000-05:00

I was talking this week with a friend who has a new baby in the house. He described the sleepless nights, and the worries about feeding, the howling, and the constant cleaning of various kinds of mess. It reminded me of those early days with each of our children- when we often thought how good it was that we love these little ones, because they literally mess up our lives. The only difference between my memories of those baby days, and what my friend is going through, is that the new little one in his house is a puppy. Actually, I have talked with several people lately who, for reasons I am not clear on, reach the stage when their own children have become mostly self-sufficient, and they deliberately go out and get themselves a puppy.

Maybe they were finding things too quiet around the house. Maybe they miss having to care for a vulnerable being, that depends upon them for life. It could be that there is part of us that craves that sense of being needed. Maybe we need to have our hearts stretched, so that we can love more.

Whether the new baby in the house is human, or canine, their presence changes everything. There is nothing like a new life in our midst to bring hope and joy, and also to bring chaos and disruption. The Bible stories have it right in this regard. New life is amazing and precious, and it is also disruptive, and challenges the old order of things.

I have noticed over the years that when it comes to re-telling the story of the birth of Baby Jesus, there is a tendency to focus on the warm fuzzy parts of the story- we enjoy the images of the beautiful boy held tenderly in his mother’s arms. But especially at Christmas time, we may be less open to hearing about the world being turned upside down. We want to sleep in heavenly peace.

A few weeks ago we began a series of teaching sermons called “Children of Promise”, about Bible stories in which God is at work to bring hope, and change into human reality, through the birth of a baby. The babies always seem to shake things up.

We have looked at Isaac and Ishmael. These sons of Abraham, born to Sarah and Hagar, each grew up to be the founders of new nations. Isaac’s descendants are the people of Israel, and his half-brother Ishmael’s descendants are members of the Arab tribes who were the first Muslims, followers of the prophet Mohammed. There is both hope, and the reminder of ongoing religious conflict in the story of these sons of Abraham. Can we seek ways for all members of God’s family to get along?

We heard about Moses, the son of Hebrew slaves in Egypt, who narrowly escaped execution, and was adopted and raised by the daughter of the Pharoah, the king of Egypt. Pharoah’s daughter knew this Hebrew child was one of those her father had ordered killed. But she was charmed by the beautiful baby, and wanted to keep him. The adult Moses re-claimed his identity as a descendant of Abraham and Isaac, and led the Hebrew people in rebellion against the Egyptian slave-masters. Cute baby Moses was used by God to free people. There are still many places in the world where we could use a Moses, to rally people in resistance against systems and governments, and corporate interests that enslave people.

We learned about Samuel, the miracle child of Hannah, who like Sarah, had been thought of as barren. Hannah prayed to God that she might have a son, and when that prayer was answered, she promised that her baby would be dedicated to God’s service. We remember Hannah because her song of praise was the model for Mary’s song of praise after the angel tells her that she will bear a child to be called Jesus.

Hannah’s son Samuel grew up to be a prophet in the nation of Israel. Samuel challenged the complacency and corruption of his fellow priests, who had found ways to make a comfortable life exploiting the religious fears of the people. Samuel was as tough on some of the religious leaders of his time as we might be on the most crooked of the television evangelists, or as Jesus was on the temple priests in Jerusalem.

This week we look at John, the baby born to Zechariah and Elizabeth. John’s parents may remind us of Abraham and Sarah, because they were also well past normal child bearing years. Elizabeth may remind us of Sarah and Hannah, because they were all thought to be barren. The fact that Zechariah is described as a faithful priest may also make us think about Samuel, who was given by his mother to be raised and trained for service in the temple. (There seem to be links between all these stories.)

John, the child of Zechariah and Elizabeth may also make us think of Moses, because he is a kind of wild figure, who challenged the way things were. Moses led a rebellion against the Egyptian slave masters, and eventually led his people out into a desert, on their way to the Promised Land. John spoke out against the corruption of the Jewish King Herod, and the temple officials in Jerusalem. People followed John out into the wilderness away from the towns and cities, to the bank of the Jordan River, where he baptized people who were ready to begin a new life. Here is how the adult John is described:

⁴ John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. ⁵ People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. ⁶ Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.

⁷ But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? ⁸ Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. ⁹ And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. ¹⁰ The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. “

Wow, John’s words make me ask myself if my life is producing good fruit, or whether it is barren. John was a fiery preacher. His words brought more challenge than they did comfort. He was eventually arrested, and then beheaded, because he spoke out publicly against Herod having an affair with his brother’s wife. In John’s story we can see a kind of preview, or foreshadowing of what happens to prophets that challenge worldly powers. Some scholars think that John’s story is preserved in the Gospels to show us that Jesus knew that risks he was taking, when he spoke out against the same worldly powers that John did.

Every year, the passages about John the Baptist come up in the cycle of readings for the Advent season. I struggle with what to do with his inflammatory prophetic words, at a time of year when many of us just want to be happy, and get ourselves in a Christmassy mood. John the Baptist reminds us that all of these children of promise in the Bible are part of God’s ongoing effort to call us to faithful living, to make the world a fair and good place to live for all. Amen

“Children of Promise: Samuel and Jesus, and their moms”

2011-11-27T00:20:00.000-05:00

I have spent time this week at Ian Anderson House, the hospice on Sir Winston Churchill Boulevard. It’s on the border between Oakville and Mississauga. It is also on the border between life and death. Another word for this is “liminal space”. People hover between this world and the next. This is true for the dying person and for those who gather with them and wait.

The space around an actively dying person is a place of mystery, between everything we know, and all that we don’t. It is an incredibly tender, and raw, and open place. Emotions are nearer the surface. We see the person who is dying, and we see each other’s hearts. We can see things that are always true, but do not always have our attention. We can see that everybody, whether they or not they are ill, is actively dying, and actively living at the same time. We can see that we are, all of us, vulnerable, and mortal, and in many ways powerless. We are all the same in this, regardless of our position in society, our place on the economic food chain, our worldly influence.

In this space we can remember what God always knows, that we are all in need of love, we are all in need of acceptance. We are all in need of reassurance. We are all in need of security, of safety, of peace. We all need to be held gently, and looked upon with love.

I was in this liminal space yesterday, and its influence is still at work in me. The harder parts of my heart are softer today. My eyes have been affected by the different light of that place, that is bright with hope, and murky with shadows at the same time. I have trouble telling people apart, because I am mostly seeing the things that make us all the same.

I sat in an easy chair in the corner of the room, and prayed, and watched as a woman in her 40’s, the youngest child of the dying man, held his hand, stroked his forehead, and repeated a spoken lullaby, “It’s okay Dad, you are safe, we are here with you, and we love you. It’s okay Dad, you are safe, we are here with you, and we love you. ”

When it seemed the right time, I stood with this woman, and her brother, and we placed hands on their father, and we prayed. I said, “Here is what I believe: Before we are born, we are with God. God watches as our body is formed in our mother’s womb. God is with us as we enter this life, and is with us for all of our earthly days. God is with us for every moment, every breath. God loves us. When we die, it is simple- we go back to be fully with God. Then I touched the man’s forehead, and said, “God is with you, and is holding you safe. I ask God to help you in your passing, and I give thanks that soon, the discomfort will be over. God is ready to welcome you home. I ask God to bless you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

I felt my words were good for that time and place. But I also felt the tremendous power and rightness, the holiness, of the daughter’s words. Words she resumed when I sat back down in the corner chair. “It’s okay Dad, you are safe, we are here with you, and we love you. “

We have been looking at stories of Children of Promise. Every child carries God’s promise of a blessed life, and is born both to love, and be loved. Every child, no matter the circumstances they are born into, comes into life vulnerable, and defenseless. They cannot survive without help, and they cannot thrive without love, and nurture.

We all arrive dependent on the loving attentions of others. We all need someone to hold us, feed us, keep us clean, to show us with actions, and tell us with words, “It’s okay, you are safe, we are here with you, and we love you.”

The stories are about babies who are almost not even born, or who after having been born, are in danger of being killed. Babies who depend upon brave and faithful people for their continued existence. It seems odd that God works this way. Why doesn’t God choose powerful people to raise these children of promise: royal families, or the families of generals, or prime ministers, or rock stars, or investment brokers? Why would God choose babies who are born, and even before they cry out in hunger for the first time, are already in this liminal space, the borderland between life as we know it, and all that we don’t know?

I think we may see part of the answer this morning in Hannah’s Song, and Mary’s Song.

Hannah was the second wife of a Hebrew man named Elkanah. His other wife, Perinnah had borne children, but Hannah had not. Perinnah provoked Hannah to irritate her, because she was childless. Once when the family was on a pilgrimage to the temple at Shiloh, Hannah stood and prayed, “LORD Almighty, if you will only look on your servant’s misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the LORD for all the days of his life…”

Eli, The temple priest, wasn’t impressed. Eli said, “How long are you going to stay drunk? Put away your wine.” (There is a hint here that Hannah was seen as a woman of questionable virtue. In those days, an affliction, like barrenness, could be interpreted as punishment for some secret sin the person has done. The provocations of the other wife may have been along these lines. But Hannah is strong enough to defend herself.)

“Not so, my lord,” Hannah replied, “I am a woman who is deeply troubled. I have not been drinking wine or beer; I was pouring out my soul to the LORD. Do not take your servant for a wicked woman; I have been praying here out of my great anguish and grief.”

Eli answered, “Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him.”

Hannah did become pregnant, and gave birth to the boy Samuel. His name means “God has heard”. When he was weaned she brought him to Shiloh, to the temple where Eli was still the priest, and said, “Pardon me, my lord. As surely as you live, I am the woman who stood here beside you praying to the LORD. ²⁷ I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him. ²⁸ So now I give him to the LORD. For his whole life he will be given over to the LORD.”

The story then presents Hannah’s Song, a powerful hymn of praise:

“My heart rejoices in the LORD;
in the LORD my horn^[^a^] is lifted high.
My mouth boasts over my enemies,
for I delight in your deliverance.

² “There is no one holy like the LORD;
there is no one besides you;
there is no Rock like our God.”

The song goes on to describe a series of reversals of fortune. Those who are powerful are brought down, and the lowly are lifted up. Those who were looked down upon are raised in stature.

⁴ “The bows of the warriors are broken,
but those who stumbled are armed with strength.
⁵ Those who were full hire themselves out for food,
but those who were hungry are hungry no more.
She who was barren has borne seven children,
but she who has had many sons pines away.

⁶ “The LORD brings death and makes alive;
he brings down to the grave and raises up.
⁷ The LORD sends poverty and wealth;
he humbles and he exalts.
⁸ He raises the poor from the dust
and lifts the needy from the ash heap;
he seats them with princes
and has them inherit a throne of honor. “

We can hear similiarities between Hannah’s Song, and Mary’s Song, also called the Magnificat. Bible scholars say that the author of Luke’s Gospel used Hannah’s Song as a model when writing about Mary’s response to being told by the angel Gabriel that she was going to bear a son. There is a connection between these two women. Hannah knew what it was like to be viewed with suspicion and scorn. Mary, if she had not know about that, would soon learn, when it became known that she, an unmarried woman, was going to have a child.

Mary’s song, like Hannah’s is about placing your faith, not in how you are viewed by the world, but in God, who has the power to work through us, in spite of, and perhaps because of, our vulnerability and powerlessness. These women, these mothers of Children of Promise know in their hearts that is in the tenuous places, between life and death, that we become most aware of the power and mystery of God. Mary sang:

My soul proclaims God's greatness.

My spirit rejoices in God my saviour.

For you have looked with favour on your lowly servant.

From this day all generations will call me blessed.

You have done great things for me, O Most Mighty.

Hallowed be your Name!

You have mercy on those who fear you,

From one generation to another.

You took action with a strong arm.

You scattered the proud in their conceit.

You pulled the mighty from their thrones.

You raised the lowly.

You filled the hungry with good things.

You sent the rich away empty.

You come to the aid of your servant, Israel,

for you remembered your promise of mercy,

to our ancestors, Abraham and Sarah,

and to their children in every age. Amen

Children of Promise: Moses

2011-11-20T00:53:00.000-05:00

Last week I talked about Isaac and Ishmael, Abraham’s boys. Isaac was the miracle baby born to Sarah when she was in her 90’s and Abraham was almost 100. There are fascinating stories about Isaac, including one in which his father almost kills him and sets him on fire as a burnt offering. Isaac survived his childhood, and grew up to marry a woman named Rebekah, who like her mother-in-law Sarah, had difficulties becoming pregnant. She eventually gave birth to twins named Jacob and Esau. There are some great sibling rivalry stories about that pair.

Jacob had 12 sons by two wives and two concubines. (Biblical family values are not what some people would make them out to be!) Jacob’s name was changed to Israel, which is also the name of the new nation of Abraham’s descendants. His sons were the patriarchs of the twelve historic tribes. The New Testament writers say that Jesus had twelve disciples- a number that is largely symbolic, because if we count all the names, there are definitely more than twelve.

But back, for the moment to Jacob. His favourite son was named Joseph. He is the one famous for his coat of many colours. I saw him played by Donny Osmond in a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which is one of my all time favourite musicals. (show video clip)

Joseph was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers and taken in bondage to Egypt. Because of his ability to interpret dreams, he ended up running the country. Eventually Joseph invited his father, his 11 brothers, and their families to live in Egypt, because their homeland was devastated by drought and famine. In the beginning, the descendants of Abraham were welcomed as guests. Over time, the Israelites, or Hebrews, as they become known, were enslaved by the Egyptians.

A couple named Amram and Jochebed, who were descended from Joseph’s brother Levi’s household, had a baby boy, who would eventually be named Moses. Moses is the child of promise I want to talk about today. I am particularly interested in the parallels between the Moses story, and events in the life of Jesus.

Moses was born under the rule of a cruel king, who had ordered the death of all Hebrew baby boys. To me this sounds like the story of the slaughter of the innocents. Matthew’s Gospel tells us that the Magi who were searching for the newborn king of the Jews had an encounter with Herod, the Roman appointed ruler of Palestine, who saw this newborn “king” as a threat, and ordered all the male children under the age of two to be killed.

Today is celebrated in the Christian church as Reign of Christ Sunday. We remember that while kings of the world like Pharoah and Herod use violence and force to protect their power, Jesus offers us a different way.

If Pharoah had his way, Moses would have been killed at birth. There is a great story about two midwives named Shiphrah and Puah, who reject Pharoah’s orders to slaughter the innocent babies. They broke the law, but did what was right. (And they were very clever about it!) When Pharoah asked why they had not been killing the Hebrew baby boys, they said, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.”

I have always loved the way the midwives use the Pharoah’s racist views against him. Whenever one group of people claims dominance over another, they find ways to dehumanize them, and see them more as lower on the food chain. It has been common for slaveholders around the world to see the slaves as physically strong, but mentally or spiritually inferior. I hear echoes of this in some of the comments about the Occupy! Toronto protestors. We are told that these people’s questions and opinions are unimportant, because many of them are young, or unemployed, or poorly dressed, or because they sleep in a park.

The Hebrew mid-wives provide a model for non-violent resistance against injustice. They also remind us that this is exactly what faithful people have always been called by God to do- stand up against evil empires, and to do what is right. If the kings of the world use their military, their police, their laws, in unfair ways, faithful people find creative, non-violent ways to resist. I am praying for the people at the Occupy! Toronto protest site in St. James Park, that they will be safe, and that they will resist the urge to strike back if and when they are threatened with force.

Speaking of the threat of violence, when the Magi left Herod, resuming their quest to find, and bring tribute to the newborn king, Herod asked them to come back and see him if they found the child. He claimed that he wanted to bring his own tribute. Being almost as wise as the midwives, the Magi saw through Herod, and when they left the baby, they went home by another route. As my son’s Tae Kwon Do teacher says, the first line of defense is to run the other way. (Matthew’s Gospel tell us that Joseph was then warned in a dream, and he took Mary and the newborn, and they fled to Egypt, to hide from the king. Interesting! Another Joseph bringing his family to Egypt for safety!

Moses’ mother hid her new born boy as long as she could. Then she made a papyrus basket, waterproofed it, and placed the baby in a floating cradle, hidden among the reeds on the banks of the Nile River. The child’s sister kept watch from a distance. The sister’s name is Miriam. Miriam is the original Hebrew form of the name Mary. Where would Moses and Jesus be without their Mary’s?

Pharoah’s daughter found the basket floating in the reeds, and the baby’s plaintive cries opened her heart. She arranged for a Hebrew woman to be the child’s wet-nurse. Part of the drama is that it was actually the baby’s mother. When the baby was weaned, his mother brought him back to the Egyptian princess, and she adopted him.

After the first line in the story, about a couple from the tribe of Levi, Moses’ father is never mentioned. He has an even smaller part in this drama than Joseph has in the life of Jesus.

The Bible does not tell us much more about the growing up years of Moses than it does of Jesus. Moses was raised as the child of a daughter of Pharoah, and lived in the royal court. Both Moses and Jesus, around the age of 30, find themselves in a desert. The wilderness of a desert is symbolic of the quest for purpose and meaning in life.

Moses fled Egypt after striking out against a slave-master who was beating up a Hebrew. He actually killed the Egyptian official. He was adopted again, into the family of a nomadic chief named Jethro. It is while he was out alone, tending to Jethro’s sheep that he had an encounter with the Spirit of God. He saw a bush that was burning without being consumed, and heard God’s voice. The voice said that, “the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. ¹⁰ So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.” (Maybe there is something about being out there taking care of sheep. That’s what the Bethlehem shepherds were doing when they met angels who sang about the birth of Jesus.)

Moses killed a man. But even that did not stop God from calling him. God has work for all of us to do, no matter what has happened in our lives. We can be recycled, and put to better use.

Jesus grew up in an obscure village in Palestine. It was a province of the Roman Empire, ruled by a puppet king put in place by the Romans, and supported by the Jewish religious officials, who had freedom to practice their religion, as long as they paid their taxes, and kept the peasants in line.

As an adult, Jesus was baptized by his cousin. John was a prophet who preached about repentance, and called people to return to a faith that was less about following religious rules, and paying tribute to the temple, and more about leading a faithful life. When Jesus emerged from the waters of the Jordan River, in which he was baptized, it was time for his new life. A voice spoke to him from the clouds, something like the voice Moses heard in the burning bush. The voice said, “This is my beloved son”

Jesus then went out into the desert, where he experienced other visions, and heard other words, that shaped and directed the rest of his earthly life.

Both Moses and Jesus are presented in the Bible as babies who almost did not survive. They were protected by people who broke the rules, and dared to defy worldly kings, to do what was right. They each grew up to serve God by offering freedom and new life to their people. Moses led a rebellion of the Hebrew slaves against their Egyptian masters. He took them out of Egypt, where they did the brute labour that made life comfortable and opulent for the powerful, so that they could search for a land promised to them by God, where they would be free.

Jesus offered freedom in his own way. He showed them a way to pray, and to approach God, that was not controlled by or dependent upon a religious hierarchy under the thumb of the Roman Empire. He presented an understanding of God’s love that included everyone- especially the poor, the sick, the powerless, the children, the street people, the widows- all the people on the fringes of life that get trampled on by the powerful and wealthy of the world, in their lust for more. Jesus came ot show us that whether you are part of the 1 % or the 99% in this world, God loves you, and that we are all equally deserving of a decent life.

I am fascinated by the way God works in these stories. The vulnerable baby who is almost killed by evil-doers, survives and thrives, and becomes the Child of Promise, who changes the world. Amen

Children of Promise: Isaac and Ishmael

2011-11-18T12:48:00.000-05:00

Two weeks ago, I finally sat down to plan out my sermons for the Advent and Christmas season- I needed to do that so that Carole and the choir could choose their Introits and Anthems, and so I would know what I was doing. I decided that I wanted to approach this season in a new way. Advent, which begins on November 27, is actually the beginning of the church year, even though it gets rolling at the end of the calendar year.

Here is a graphic that shows how the church year compares to the regular calendar. The church year has evolved over the centuries, and is built on major events in the life of Jesus. Advent is a time for preparation for Jesus’ birth. The season after Christmas Day is meant as a time to celebrate that new life. Epiphany, which begins with the visit of the Magi, is a time to think about spreading the Good News about Jesus to all people, in all places.

Lent is the time to let the message sink in, and look at how our lives need to change, in response to what we learn from Jesus, about how God would have us live. Lent ends with Holy Week, and the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection, his life beyond death. The Easter season is a time to celebrate and wrestle with the meaning of resurrection. At the end of the Easter Season comes Pentecost, which is about how the first Christians, and us, carry on, living the Way of Jesus, beyond his earthly life. The Pentecost story contains the promise that God’s spirit is with us, and will guide us, and help us. The long season after Pentecost is also called Ordinary Time, which is a long stretch until the wheel of the year turns around to Advent again.

For this time leading up to Christmas I want to look at places in the Bible when a baby is the star of the story. I am calling all these babies “Children of Promise”.

We will start with Isaac and his half brother Ishmael, who are sons of Abraham, born to Sarah and Hagar. We will move next week to Moses, and then to Samuel, and then on to John, who grows up to be John the Baptist, and finally, on the Sunday before Christmas, to Jesus. We will take a break from this on December 4^th, for the presentation of the Nativity Play.

My hope is that looking at the stories of these Children of Promise will help us see that in every age, and for every generation, God is at work to bring us hope, and new life, and the possibility of change for the better. All of these babies were central figures in stories about shaking up the ways things are, to make them more like the way things should be, from God’s point of view.

This morning Jacquie read for us from the 17^th and 18^th chapters of the Book of Genesis. If you do a Google search online for the word Genesis, you will read that it is the name of an English rock band formed by Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel. After that, if you read further, you find that it is the name of the first book of the Hebrew Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament.

In the original Hebrew, the first words of the Bible are Bereʾšyt, or "In [the] beginning”. The Hebrew was translated first into Greek, in which the word “beginning” was rendered as “origin”. Then the Greek was translated into Latin, the official language of the Roman church, and ”origin” became Genesis. The Book of Genesis is a collection of stories about a Middle Eastern tribal group who eventually are called the Jews, who came to see themselves as chosen by God.

The story of Abraham and Sarah is about the beginning of that relationship. It all starts with a kind of birth announcement. In chapter 17, God appears to a man named Abram, who is 99 years old, and tells him that if he will promise to be faithful, he will be rewarded. Being faithful will mean entering into an agreement, or covenant with God, to do certain things, and to avoid doing certain other things. The first thing Abram has to do is to arrange that he himself, and every other male in his household, regardless of age, will be circumcised- as a sign of Abram’s willingness to keep his side of the agreement.

The reward that God offers in return for being faithful, is that Abram and his wife Sarai will be the first generation of a new nation, made up of their descendants. This great nation of people will need a country to call their own. In the story, God promises Abram that generations descended from him will be given the land of Canaan to be their country.

Whenever I read this story I think about the native people of North America, some of whom teach that when you have a big decision to make, you need to think about the next 7 generations. People who have not been born yet will have to live with the long term implications of what you choose. How different would our world be if we practiced this kind of generational thinking? When I listen to the news these days, it seems like our world is being run by people who only think as far as the next quarterly profit statement, or the next election. (I think that is part of what the Occupy! Movement is about, the need to think beyond ourselves.) Abram is being invited to think about tens of thousands, and eventually millions of people, who have not even been born yet.

The story is that if Abram enters this covenant with God, he and his wife Sarai will be given new names, a fresh start, and will soon also have a son. This all sounds good, except that this couple is in their 90’s, and have to this point not been able to have a child together. (I love the fact that in this story about changing the world, God is using an old couple, and the possibility of a little baby. God works with unlikely heroes, in surprising ways.)

A further complication is that if they do have a child, it will not exactly be Abram’s first born. In order to satisfy Abram’s need for a male heir, Sarai had arranged for Abram to conceive a child with her maid, a woman named Hagar. Abram’s first born, and male heir is a boy named Ishmael. (I think I saw this story on an afternoon talk show once. Maybe it was a soap opera!) These Bible characters did not exactly live squeaky clean, perfect lives.

The child of promise that will be born to Abraham and Sarah, (those are their new names), will be called Isaac, which comes from some Hebrew words that mean “she laughed”- which is how Sarah reacted when told the news that she was going to be a mother at age 90. But what does this mean for Hagar and Ishmael?

A couple of weeks ago some members of Trinity attended an event called “The Children of Abraham”, which featured talks from Jewish, and Muslim, and Christian teachers. The name of the event refers to the Middle Eastern tradition that says while Isaac became Abraham’s heir, and the ancestor of the new nation of people called the Jews, Ishmael was also the ancestor of a great nation- the Arab tribes that eventually embrace the teachings of Mohammed, and become followers of Islam.

According to an historian of religion named Karen Armstrong, Mohammed, the founder of Islam, heard about Abraham and Ishmael from some of his Jewish friends, who told him some of the oral traditions, or folk tales they had grown up with. One of those stories, passed on from generation to generation, even though it does not appear in any book of scripture, said that Sarah was jealous of Hagar and Ishmael, and wanted Abraham to give his full attention to her and Isaac. In this folk tale, Abraham takes Hagar and Ishmael to a safe place in the valley of Mecca, where God can take care of them. When Ishmael grows to manhood, Abraham visits him, and together it is said that they built the Kabah, the temple which becomes the focal point of Muslim faith.

This is a way of saying that because Jesus was a Jew, who brought the message from God that led to Christianity, and because Mohammed was an Arab, descended from Abraham’s first son Ishmael, that Jews, and Christians, and Muslims all share a heritage. We are all family. We are all children of promise. Amen

Saints: past, present and future

2011-10-29T23:53:00.000-04:00

I have a true story to tell, about a young man from a wealthy family, a child of privilege and power, who could go anywhere, have anything, and do anything he wanted. He was born into a household in which they ate the best foods, drank the best wines, and kept company with the rich and famous, and influential. They had champagne wishes and caviar dreams. People thought the young man was spoiled, and would not amount to much, but kept those thoughts to themselves, not wanting to offend his father, a powerful businessman.

This young man did not get far in his education. He’d gone to a private school, but was easily distracted from his studies, and was far more interested in popular music, and fashion, than in higher learning. His father tried to involve him in the business- gave him a sales position, but he was terrible at keeping track of money, and actually gave away more goods than he sold.

At age twenty, this young man joined the military, but was captured in his first battle, and held for more than a year as a prisoner of war. While in captivity he contracted a fever, and was ill for months. With little else to do, he lay in bed and pondered the emptiness of the life he had led to this point, and he resolved to do better. When he was repatriated, he signed on for another tour of duty.

The night before he was to ship out he had a strange dream. He heard a voice call to him, which he later understood to be God. He tried to ignore the voice, and its message, but it came to him in another dream, telling him to return to his hometown, and abandon his military ambitions.

The influence of his family helped smooth over his exit from the army, but his father was not happy to see him failing in yet another way. For a while the young man partied through his nights, and slept through the days, but even his drinking buddies could see his heart was not in it. He looked absent-minded, and stared off into space while others were laughing and singing.

The young man began to spend his time in prayer and meditation. He gave away his fashionable clothes. One day, while out horseback riding, he met a man on a country road who was in desperate need, and emptied his wallet into the man’s hands. This kind of thing just infuriated his father, who after all, had given his son all the things he was now just “throwing away”.

More and more the young man felt drawn to a life of simplicity and poverty. He found a church in a bad neighbourhood that needed a lot of work, and decided to do something about it. He later told people he had heard God’s voice telling him to repair what was falling into ruin. He went to his Dad’s store and gathered up supplies he thought he could use. He sold his possessions, and brought the money and the supplies to the minister. The minister knew the young man’s family, and refused the gifts.

This confused the young man, and enraged his father, when he got wind of what his son had attempted. By this time, the young man’s family, and many of his friends in town thought that he’d gone off the deep end. After all, you would have to be crazy to prefer poverty over wealth. His attitude was a challenge to all those who worked hard for what they had. His father dragged him home and locked him in his room.

The young man had a huge confrontation with his family, during which he renounced his inheritance. One version of the story says he handed back to his father all that he had, even the clothes he was wearing, and walked away. One of his remaining friends took pity on him and gave him some simple clothes. He kept walking until he found himself at the gates of a monastery, where the monks took him in, and he earned his keep by washing dishes in the kitchen.

This was the beginning of a new stage in this man’s life. Eventually he left that monastery, and struck out on his own. He found another old church that needed repair, and begged for the materials to fix it up. From this base of operations, he began to gather other people who were disillusioned with the materialism of the time, and who wanted a life of pure service to God. This was the beginning of what would later become a new religious order in the Roman Catholic Church, named after its founder, Saint Francis of Assisi.

(Show Occupy Toronto clip.) This is part of a video that has been uploaded to Youtube about Occupy Toronto. What strikes me about the people in the scenes is how ordinary they look.

One of the things I realized as I was learning about Francis is that close up, it may be difficult to tell the difference between a saint and a rebel, or a saint and a crazy person. In his time, during those years when he was struggling to sort himself out, and find the place in the world that God had for him, Francis frustrated almost everybody around him. They just wanted him to settle down, get a job, and stop ticking off his father. They did not want to hear what he was saying about resisting greed, and using what we have to help those who are hungry, homeless, and sick. They did not want to have to wrestle with the possibility that their town, their culture, needed to change.

This morning the Sunday School kids will hear one of the most famous stories told about Saint Francis- not the one about him stripping off his clothes and belongings, and walking away naked from his old life! The story they will hear is about him coming to a town called Gubbio, and learning that the people were being terrorized by a wolf. The wolf was ravenous, and would attack any animal or person that stepped outside the protective town’s walls.

The legend says that Saint Francis went outside the town wall, praying as he walked, to meet the wolf. When the dangerous creature charged towards him, jaws wide open, Francis made the sign of the cross, and the wolf immediately slowed down, and closed its mouth. He called out, “Come to me, Brother Wolf. I wish you no harm.” The wolf lowered its head and lay down at hi’ feet, meek as a lamb.

Francis offered forgiveness and reconciliation to the wolf, and asked the wolf and the townspeople to make a pact. The wolf agreed to remain peaceful, and in return the people set out food and water for him. This arrangement stayed in place for a few years, until the wolf died of old age.

The story is often told to illustrate why Francis is the patron saint of animals, and as an example of his total dependence upon God. But whether or not Francis ever really tamed a wolf, I think the story says something about facing up to evil in the world, and offering a way of forgiveness, and cooperation, and love.

I think that saints are ordinary people like you and I. God uses ordinary people to offer hope to the world, by pointing to another way to be- a way rooted in love, forgiveness and reconciliation, in generosity, and compassion.

When we welcome people as members of the Christian Church we ask them to join us as together we celebrate God’s presence in the world, to live with respect in creation, to love and serve others, and seek justice and resist evil. This is not just for the special people. There is so much loving and working and sharing needed in our world, that this is for all of us.

As we say almost every week, in our closing blessing and commissioning,

We leave here with much to do.

There is love to be shared, hope to be offered.

There are choices to be made.

There are acts of kindness and mercy that need doing.

There is praying, and feeding, and encouraging to do.

These things are for us. We can live boldly, or die sadly.

Maybe a saint is someone who lives boldly, for God. Amen

Living Right Here, and Now, in God's Love

2011-10-23T01:18:00.000-04:00

Do you remember this guy? Alfred E. Neuman, the face of Mad Magazine, famous for the caption that is often shown with him that says, “What me worry?”

I sometimes think of old Alfred (he does not look it, but he’s been around in one form or another for about 80 years!) when I read or hear Jesus’ words from Luke’s Gospel:

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. ²³ For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. ²⁴ Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! ²⁵ Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life? ²⁶ Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?

Have you ever tried to give someone the advice, “Don’t worry about it.”? In most cases, that kind of advice usually does not help.

Years ago, the amazing vocal performer Bobby McFerrin had a big pop hit called, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”. I still like that song. The tune is upbeat, and infectious, and I find it hard not to smile when I hear it. But I also remember a woman in one of my congregations who told me that song really bothered her, because in her experience, being told not to worry just made her feel worse, because she did not know how to stop worrying. Being told to be happy just rubbed her face in the reality that she did not feel happy, and did not know how to feel happy.

This past week, our daughter was quite upset because for the second time since the beginning of this school year, she got a low mark on a math test. Low for her is anything less than 75%. A few weeks ago she had a 70. This week she had a 60. If we told her not to worry about it, she would very likely just be even more upset.

What to do? As a parent, I recognize that she needs to deal with the problem in a constructive way, rather than just pretend there is no problem. She needs a positive alternative to worrying, and still failing. But she is a young woman who does not like to be helped. She declined our offer to get her a tutor. She strongly resisted letting me teach her. I finally asked her two questions: “Is what you are doing on your own working? Do you know how to fix this yourself?”

Perhaps because the issue was, on the surface at least, about math, I quoted Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. This insight applies not just to studying math. When we are stuck in a negative pattern, there comes a time to break the cycle, and introduce a new perspective, a new way of being. (I like this picture of Einstein- he looks like he is deep in thought, or praying!)

After much discussion, our daughter has allowed me to review her homework after she does it. If I understand it, I ask about the questions for which I think her answers may need work. I begin by reminding her that I may not even understand the questions, since it is over 30 years since I was in a math class. Whether or not I can help her with every question, I want to encourage her to keep an open mind about learning, and asking for help, and new perspective, when she seems stuck.

This week I listened to an interview with an American author named Dan Buettner, who studies happiness. Sounds like a pretty good job to me! He looked at the results of surveys involving tens of millions of people, who were asked about their overall satisfaction with life- in other words, how happy are they? He is interested in measurable factors that contribute to people feeling happy.

Buettner visited the places that seem to have the most happy people, to get a handle on what environmental, social, economic, political, even geographical factors contribute to happiness, or make it difficult to be happy. He has a book called “Thrive”, and is an associated website. He consults with towns and cities, and even one whole state, to help them examine the quality of life in their communities, with the goal of developing happier places to live. Simple things like the capacity to live close enough to be able to walk or bike to where you work can make a big difference. For many people, limiting the amount of time spent in front of a tv screen or computer monitor, and replacing it with social interaction with real people can help.

Here are six basic areas in which he believes we can take positive action to improve our happiness: Community, workplace, social life, financial life, home, and self.

In the interview Buettner quoted studies that reveal what many of us already intuitively know, that being involved with a faith community, and making time each day for prayer, meditation, and other spiritual practices increases the likelihood that you will be happy.

There may be major areas of our lives over which we feel we have no control, and no power to make changes. But when it comes to ourselves, and to our spiritual lives, we can learn a new perspective, and perhaps some new skills, that can help.

The Sunday School lesson for this morning is about learning to live joyfully in the moment, and not be weighed down with memories of past things that we cannot undo, or worries about future things over which we have no control. (Pretty good topic for our kids to be thinking about!)

Our faith does contain a positive way to do this. It was mentioned in Psalm 46, which you read responsively this morning. Just a few lines after the psalm says that, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” there is another famous and important line, “Be still and know that I am God”

This scripture verse has been used for centuries for prayerful meditation. Let’s take a few moments now, and give it a try. Make sure you are comfortable where you are sitting, with your spine as straight as you can manage, and feet touching the floor. Pay attention to your own breathing, and let yourself relax.

We are going to allow the line from the psalm as a way of quieting ourselves, to simply be with God, and to listen to what God may be telling us in this moment:

Be still and know that I am God…..

Be still and know that I am…..

Be still and know….

Be still….

Be….

God is always with us- around us, and within us. Jesus talked about the kingdom of God being within us. Jesus talked about loving and forgiving others, and letting go of past resentments. Jesus talked about letting go of worries. To me, these teachings sound a lot like learning to simply live in the present moment, with God.

We live in an age of portable electronics- cell phones and blackberries and laptops, and Ipods, and Ipads- that all depend upon keeping the battery charged, to be able to connect us to the world. Some people describe coming to church as something like plugging their spirit in to a big re-charger, that fills them up with the spark they need for the next week. I can understand that. I also know that for me, and I think for many people, the once a week top-up is not really adequate. I need to spend more time deeply connected to God- or at least quieting myself enough to recognize that God is already with me, within me, around me.

I find that on the days I take 10 or 20 minutes for stillness, and quiet prayer, I am better able to see God at work in my life, and in the world I live in. I am more able to see God at work in the people I meet. I think that daily spiritual practice helps me to be more like the person God is at work creating me to be, and more able to connect with others.

There are many ways to create that still, calm, peaceful time, to practice living right in the moment. Yesterday there were 12 of us here at the church learning about walking the labyrinth, an ancient prayer practice that has enjoyed a revival in the last 20 years. The Labyrinth is a way that people who are not much for sitting still can use their whole body to pray. I sometimes feel that is what I am doing when I run.

During Advent we had a lunch hour series called “munching on the word”. We met over the lunch hour on Wednesdays to practice Lectio Divina, a prayerful way to read scripture. We also had the big X-Prayer-Iment during Lent, which was a 6 week program of daily devotions and prayers. Both of these ways to pray tended to engage the mind, the intellect, as well as the heart, in prayer.

Two years ago Trinity offered a workshop on Centering Prayer, another ancient form of meditative prayer. Centering Prayer is a non-verbal method of prayer that seeks to quiet, and open the mind and heart, to let go of external, and internal distractions, to make space for God’s presence.

In the coming months Trinity will be offering some new opportunities to grow in our spiritual lives, and to learn more about Living Right Here, and Now, in God’s Love. Amen

The realm of hungry ghosts

2011-10-08T23:08:00.000-04:00

Twice recently I’ve borrowed a friend’s pickup, and hauled a load from our house, to the Halton Region Waste Management Site. It is quite a place, incredibly well designed, and organized.

The modern landfill is very different from the dump outside of Thunder Bay I remember from my growing up years. My Dad was a tv repairman. Every few months we’d unload a van-full of old televisions. If we hung around long enough, we’d see them all crunched and crushed by the bulldozer, and then buried. As the technology advanced, it became cheaper to buy new electronics, than to fix the old stuff. That was 35 years ago, and that trend has not slowed, but grown to include phones, computers, and most appliances. At least now much of the metal is rescued, and used again.

Have you been to the landfill? A long winding road, made from over 35,000 recycled car tires takes you to the scale, where your vehicle is weighed, and where the attendant asks about the contents of your load. They have specific bins, and areas, for the disposal of metals, and wood, and concrete, and batteries, and items like smoke detectors that contain radioactive material. There are strict rules about the disposal of oils, and paints, and other chemical products.

Once you pass through the scales, you follow the path you have been given, that takes you to the area where you can unload. Often times you have to visit more than one part of the huge grounds, to properly dump the different categories of waste. They pretty much have to trust that you will follow the rules, and not dump your anti-freeze in the wood-bin, because there aren’t enough staff to monitor all the areas, and all the dumpers. It is a huge, busy place.

Each working day, more than 300 metric tonnes of non-hazardous solid waste material go in the landfill, much of it produced by the half million people who live in Halton Region. That’s after the compostables, the recyclables, and the re-usable materials have been diverted. I read that each Canadian produces a little over 400 kilograms for the landfill each year.

Last time I was waiting in line at the landfill, on the long narrow road that leads in to that vast wasteland, I found myself pondering a teaching from Tibetan Buddhism called the Wheel of Life.

The Wheel of Life describes 6 different realms of existence into which a soul can be reborn. Tibetan Buddhists teach that existence is cyclic, and we work our way up a ladder of realms, taking lessons from each until we achieve enlightenment, and can break out of the cycle of reincarnation. We needn’t take the Wheel of Life literally, to learn from the teaching.

Two steps below the human realm, is the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts. Hungry Ghosts are desperate, phantom-like creatures. They are shaped like big tear drops, with tiny heads, very thin necks, and huge bloated stomachs. They are described as having mouths the size of a needle’s eye and a stomach the size of a mountain. The tiny mouth and thin neck makes eating and drinking incredibly painful, but they have these huge bellies to fill, so they are always hungry.

These creatures are metaphors for a miserable, grasping existence. Their insatiable hunger represents deep unmet needs, that can never be satisified, no matter how much food and drink is painfully forced down. There is something, or several somethings, that these creatures needed, and did not get, in the past, and they endlessly seek gratification to fill a hole left empty long ago. The huge bloated stomachs do not represent feeling comfortably full, but rather, achingly empty.

The waste management site, the landfill, the dump, whatever we call it, is symbolic of our culture’s huge appetite. We go through so much stuff, and our appetite is never satisfied. We are addicted to producing and consuming, and waste so much that could go to help and feed people whose physical needs are far greater than our own. I remember being in Peru 25 years ago, and driving by a huge dump that was home to thousands of people. The government erected huge billboards around it so tourists driving in from the airport would not see children picking through the garbage for their breakfast.

I first heard about the Hungry Ghosts when I listened to an interview with Gabor Mate’, a physician in Vancouver. He works at a harm reduction facility and supervised safe-injection site for drug addicts. He wrote about addiction in his book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. He says the metaphor “speaks to a part of us that I have and everybody in our society has, where we want satisfaction from the outside, where we’re empty, where we want to be soothed by something in the short term, but we can never feel that or fulfill that insatiety from the outside. “

Mate’ went on to say “addicts are in that realm all the time. Most of us are in that realm some of the time.” He makes the challenging assertion that there’s no clear distinction between the identified addict and the rest of us. There’s just a continuum in which we all may be found. They’re on it, because they’ve suffered a lot more than most of us. “

Mate’ thinks the capacity for addiction is born when crucial emotional needs are not met. The drug addict that seems to chase high after high is also seeking relief from inner pain. He looked at the stories of his patients, and noted the conditions of poverty, of physical and sexual abuse, and of emotional deprivation that made up their backgrounds.

Mate’ looks unflinchingly at his own addictions, to work, and success, and to shopping. He says that “Addiction is a poor substitution for love.” Mate’ grew up in Holocaust-era Budapest, and most of his died in Nazi work camps. His mother survived to raise him, but they were physically starving, and in life-threatening situations until they escaped and emigrated to Canada. His mother suffered, understandably with depression, and was incapable of meeting his basic needs for love, and approval, and security. He says about himself,

“all my life, I have this propensity to soothe myself. How do I do that? Well, one way is to work a lot and to gets lots of admiration and lots of respect and people wanting me. If you get the impression early in life that the world doesn’t want you, then you’re going to make yourself wanted and indispensable. And people do that through work. I did it through being a medical doctor. I also have this propensity to soothe myself through shopping, especially when I’m stressed, and I happen to shop for classical compact music. But it goes back to this insatiable need of the infant who is not soothed, and they have to develop, or their brain develop, these self-soothing strategies.”

As a physician, Mate’ says that the parts of the brain circuitry involved with addiction respond to endorphins, the “brain’s feel good, reward, pleasure and pain relief chemicals. They also happen to be the love chemicals that connect us to the universe and to one another.”

I find this fascinating, that researchers can identify the brain chemistry at work when we feel love, and one-ness with the created universe. People become addicted to drugs like caffeine and heroin and alcohol and nicotine, and activities like acting out sexually, or gambling, or shopping, or taking part in extreme sports. These all produce dopamine in the brain, and create pleasure feelings that are a poor substitute for what we really need- which is love.

The meaning I find in the metaphor of the Hungry Ghosts is that if we fall for the illusion, the lie, that money, or power, or gorging ourselves on food and drink, or that new car that we think we deserve will make us feel better, if we remain caught in the endless cycle of consumerism, we will become increasingly lost, and distant from the real meaning and beauty of life. The hunger that many of us try to satisfy with the wrong things, is a spiritual hunger. It is that deep human need to experience love, and to truly be connected to a reality beyond ourselves, and our own selfish desires.

Our Christian faith teaches that all that we are, and all that we have in this life, comes to us as a gift from God. Gratitude, the act of giving thanks, is not just a nice thing to do, to stay in the good books of the one who gave you something. Gratitude is a spiritual discipline that reminds us of our connection to God, our dependence upon God. We need to be reminded that our hunger for God will never really be satisfied by anything else.

In our gospel story for today, Jesus offered healing and hope to 10 people who were physically unwell, and estranged from their families. Their leprosy made them unclean, and unfit to live with others, according to the religion and law of the time. They would have lived on the fringes of civilized life, existing on the scraps, and the occasional kindnesses extended to them by people who were afraid to draw near to them. They would have been hungry for food, hungry for the company of family and old friends. They would have thirsted for a sense of connection to their community. They would have longed for respect, and dignity, and kindness.

By reaching out to these people, Jesus was offering a way for them to leave the ghostly realm of half-life, and re-enter the land of the living. He was offering them far more than a cure for a physical malady. Of the ten lepers who were offered this incredible gift, it seems like only one of them was truly grateful. We should endeavour to be more like that one in ten. As Thomas Merton said in the quote we heard earlier:

To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us — and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him. Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.

Amen. Thanks be to God

Contemplating Jesus

2011-09-25T00:36:00.000-04:00

Jesus walked into the temple in Jerusalem, the centre of cultural and religious power of the Jewish world, and began to teach. Jesus was well known to the chief priests and other temple leader. He had a growing following amongst the poor and common people, and the temple crowd saw him as a challenge to their way of doing things, and their interpretations of faithful living.

It is not surprising then, that these leaders, who may have felt threatened, not only by Jesus, but by his popularity, asked him, "By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?"

That’s an “us and them” question. These temple priests, who were used to having an exclusive franchise on teaching about matters of faith, sound defensive. It’s often the case that when someone feels defensive, they act out aggressively. They have to prove they are right. So they claim the authority to ask about his authority.

There does not seem to be room in their thinking for the possibility that God may be at work in Jesus, even as God is at work in them. They may have used more formal language, but the thrust of their question to Jesus was likely, “So why should people listen to you?”

That may be our question as well. Why do we gather in a church, to hear about Jesus?

A fundamentalist can give you their answer pretty quick. “Because if you don’t believe what we believe, you are going to hell.” In this way of thinking, there is only one truth, and only one source for that truth. As I have mentioned in sermons for the last couple of weeks, there are fundamentalists in every major religion, all proclaiming that their way is the only way. There are also more moderate voices in every religion, people who are open to the possibility that God is at work amongst all people, and that truth is not the exclusive franchise of any single group.

There are compassionate voices in every religion, people who are so filled with God’s love that they are far more interested in caring for others, than they are in converting them to their brand of religion, or making them think a certain way. One of the most amazing examples was Mother Teresa, the Albanian woman who lived most of her life amongst the poorest of the poor in Calcutta.

I have a short video clip to remind us of her life and work, and of the love that shines through her.

This week I re-read an interview that Edward Desmond did with Mother Teresa for Time Magazine in 1989. He asked if she was disappointed that her work had not brought greater numbers of converts to Christianity in India. She spoke about her way of being a missionary:

Mother Teresa: Missionaries don't think of that. They only want to proclaim the Word of God. Numbers have nothing to do with it. But the people are putting prayer into action by coming and serving the people. Continually people are coming to feed and serve, so many, you go and see. Everywhere people are helping. We don't know the future. But the door is already open to Christ. There may not be a big conversion like that, but we don't know what is happening in the soul.

Time: What do you think of Hinduism?

Mother Teresa: I love all religions, but I am in love with my own. No discussion. That's what we have to prove to them. Seeing what I do, they realize that I am in love with Jesus.

Time: And they should love Jesus too?

Mother Teresa: Naturally, if they want peace, if they want joy, let them find Jesus. If people become better Hindus, better Moslems, better Buddhists by our acts of love, then there is something else growing there. They come closer and closer to God. When they come closer, they have to choose.

It sounds to me like she had found had a way, to a large degree, to put the practice of loving people ahead of her own opinions about what might be the best religion. I love when she said, “I love all religions, but I am in love with my own.” There is a balance here between her loyalty to the way of Jesus, and her humility about her faith, and her own place in the scheme of things.

I thought of Mother Teresa after reading, and praying over the second scripture for this morning, from Paul’s letter to the Phillipians. Especially these words:

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…” (Phillipians 2:3-5)

How different in tone, compared to the words of the temple priests who ask Jesus, "By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?"

There is a growing movement that says Mother Teresa was a saint. My sense of her is that she would have rejected the idea. She often said, “I’m like a little pencil in God’s hand. God does the writing. “ I think of Mother Teresa as a human being like you and me, who found a way to serve others, and to do what Saint Paul describes as “putting on the mind of Christ”.

How does a person make the journey from pride and defensiveness to humility and loving regard for other people? How do we find a balance between living out of a commitment to our own faith, and also having genuine respect for the faith of others? For people of faith in a post 9/11 world, this continues to be a vital question. How do we not fall into the trap of seeing anyone who does not share our faith as the enemy?

For Mother Teresa, and for many others, the path to this deep connection to the loving way of Jesus, has been prayer. In 1989, the interviewer asked:

Time: What did you do this morning?

Mother Teresa: Pray.

Time: When did you start?

Mother Teresa: Half-past four

Time: And after prayer

Mother Teresa: We try to pray through our work by doing it with Jesus, for Jesus, to Jesus. That helps us to put our whole heart and soul into doing it. The dying, the cripple, the mental, the unwanted, the unloved they are Jesus in disguise.

Last year during the Lenten season, we had 20 people who took part in what we called an X-Prayer-Iment. They committed to daily prayer and devotional readings, deep conversations with prayer partners, and weekly classes. Most of the folks who were in the program gave very positive feedback. I am now working on the details of a follow-up program that I think will be even better, because of what we learned the first time around.

I am looking at a book called “Creating a Life with God” by a pastor and psychologist named Daniel Wolpert, who serves at a Presbyterian church in a small town in Minnesota. He has also founded an Institute for Contemplation and Healing, because he believes that contemplative prayer can help us overcome the things that separate people, and prevent them from seeing each other as brothers and sisters in God’s family. Wolpert talks about contemplative prayer as a deep conversation that begins as communion with God, and leads to transformation- it changes people from the inside out.

Wolpert says this about the human condition, before and after that transformation:

“We are creatures who are lost and confused, trapped in the maze of our own little view of the world, and the only way out of the maze is the lifeline that God offers us. Yet often we cannot see that salvation-the solution to our estrangement from the divine- is right under our noses. Prayer opens our eyes. Prayer illuminates our minds, enabling the love of God to permeate all that we do.”

That sounds like a pretty good way to live. Amen

Knowing God

2011-09-17T23:47:00.000-04:00

One of the comments I get about my monthly visits to the Sunday School is that people feel that on those mornings, they miss out on the children’s story. I wonder if that means that the children’s time is actually the best part of the service!

This week I told the children a story from our new curriculum, about an encounter with an elephant. It is based on a parable that originates in India, and has appeared in the teachings of the Buddhist, and Jain, and Sufi, and Hindu religions. In the 1800’s an American poet named John Godfrey Saxe used this story as the basis for a poem. Here is how his version goes: (view video of the Story of the Elephant)

The poet chose to end the story in a moment in which all the seekers after knowledge about the elephant are still in the dark. It seems to want to leave his readers in a dark place, and to emphasize that our knowledge is incomplete, and that in his words, people prate on about something none of them have ever seen.

In the version of the story I told the kids , the seekers were children at a school for the blind in the Himalayas. Their teacher had a cousin who brought his elephant for a visit. After each of the children had investigated, and reported what they were able to learn, the teacher said they were all right, and they were all wrong. The teacher led the students around the entire elephant, and each child had the opportunity to touch the snake-like trunk, the rope-like tail, the wall-like sides, and the tree-like legs. Each child was lifted up to touch the flapping fan-like ears.

The youngest student speaks the moral when they say “I think we learned a lot from teacher elephant today! All of our experiences were true, but none of us knew the whole truth.”

This way of telling the parable allows us to walk away from the elephant with at least two possible lessons. One is about the value of a having a teacher who can help us find our way. Another lesson is about the value of being part of a community of seekers and learners. Each of those students learned a part of the truth, and all those parts contributed, literally, to a much larger body of knowledge. These learners were guided by a teacher who helped the students take seriously their own experience, and to value the experiences of the other learners.

Last week, as we took time to mark the 10^th anniversary of the tragedies of 9/11, it seemed important to remember to be humble about the claims of religion. So much harm has been done in God’s name, often driven by the claim that one religion, or another, is absolutely right, and all others have it wrong.

While religions can be divinely inspired, and have important truths to offer, they are still very much human institutions. Like every other human institution, a religious group can cause a lot of trouble, when it begins to act like it has all the answers.

When a religion, any religion acts like it has all the answers, we can be left with the impression that faith is an “all or nothing” proposition. We either buy in to the whole package, or not. This sets religion up in competition with all other ways of thinking, and all sources of knowledge. This is akin to the blind men in the poem arguing about the elephant.

A good example is the Creationism versus Science debate. There are many Christians who have been taught, and who stridently teach others, that every word in the Bible is literally true. For them, the Bible is the final authority on every subject. There is a story in the Book of Genesis that describes God creating the world in six days. Some Christians use that story as their reason to reject the scientific view that the ongoing process of creation began millions or billions of years ago. There are people who teach their children that dinosaurs never existed, because they are not mentioned in the book of Genesis.

This kind of extremism gives Christianity a bad name. It also does a real dis-service to the Bible, which is an amazing book, well worth reading, especially if you don’t expect it to be a history or science textbook.

The “all or nothing” approach to religion can set us up to think that doubt is the opposite of faith. In this way of thinking, faith equals total agreement with everything our religion tells us, and if we have questions or doubts, or confusion about what we have been taught, the problem is always with us, and not with the teachings. We can be told to go away and pray about it, with the hope that somehow God will shut down the part of our mind that harbours questions and doubts.

I don’t think that the definition of a faithful person is someone who unquestioningly accepts all that their religion teaches. I don’t think that God wants us to shut our brains down.

The British historian of religion, Karen Armstrong, in her book “The Case for God”, discussed the meaning of the word “belief”.

“Originally the Middle English bileven meant ‘to love; to prize; to hold dear’; and the noun bileve meant ‘loyalty; trust; commitment; engagement.’ It was related to the German liebe and the Latin libido (“desire.”) In the English versions of the Bible, the translators used these words to render the Greek pistis; pisteuo; and the Latin fides; credo. Thus ‘belief’ became the equivalent of ‘faith’. But ‘belief” began to change its meaning during the late seventeenth century. It started to be used of an intellectual assent to a particular proposition, teaching, opinion, or doctrine... ” (From the Glossary of The Case for God, p.370)

Belief used to be about giving your heart- being in relationship with someone, or something. But western culture changed, and the scientific view of things gained dominance. Religious authorities, especially in Europe, saw themselves in competition with the other emerging source of knowledge, science. Belief now described a mental exercise, agreeing with an idea.

This is a movement away from feeling connected to God, or desiring to be closer to God, to agreeing with an idea about God. In another part of her book, Armstrong said that in the early Christian church, converts were not taught the creeds, the formal ideas about God, until after they were baptized. You joined the community of the faithful first, and then learned the fine points of the teachings. In recent years we have tended to do the exact opposite- confirming people as members only after teaching them our ideas about God, and asking them to agree.

I remember going through confirmation class as a young adult. It was basically a set of questions about God, and Jesus, and the church, with the “correct” answers printed right below the question. This reminds me of a joke.

The minister has all the kids gathered at the front of the sanctuary for children’s time. He asks, “What is brown and furry, and climbs trees, and scurries about gathering nuts?” The kids just stare at him, silently, until one brave young soul says, “Well it kind of sounds like a squirrel, but we know that with you the answer is always Jesus!”

This morning we heard two versions of a learning session some disciples had with Jesus. They ask him for more faith. What I hear Jesus saying in response is that when it comes to faith, it is not about size, it’s about presence. Faith is like a seed growing within us. I think the place our faith gets fed and watered, is in community with others who are also seeking to grow in faith, and to live differently because of that faith.

There was a piece in Thursday’s Globe and Mail that I recommend. A woman named Kate Soles, who lives in Victoria, wrote about the decision to baptize her son:

“If forced to classify my religious beliefs, I would label myself agnostic. Though I often sense a divine presence in my life, I cannot reconcile the tension between belief and knowledge. I remain skeptical that human reason will ever prove the existence of a single deity.

In my own state of uncertainty, how could I promise to share my faith with Eliot? How would I foster his spirituality and help him celebrate God’s presence when I needed convincing of it myself? I worried that I lacked the conviction to make such vows, that doing so would appear artificial and dishonest.”

Despite her concerns about her own questions, she does choose baptism for her son, and I am proud to say she chose a United Church congregation where she felt he would learn to “worship with sensitivity and discernment.” She said “I want to foster his curiosity about God so that he asks questions about creation, nature and discipleship.”

The end article concludes with a description of the moment of Eliot’s baptism, which is also a moment in which Kate experiences the joy of being part of a faith-seeking community:

Standing at the altar last March holding my five-month-old child, facing a sea of his grandparents, aunties, cousins and friends, I felt genuinely embraced.

As the ceremony began, I sensed a spiritual breath flowing through the sanctuary. With serenity, Jean and I made our sacred vows in front of the congregation, who promised in return to provide Eliot with a place to be nurtured and understood.

Eliot stared awestruck at the holy water flowing from pitcher to basin. He appeared perplexed but not unhappy as Gaye (the minister) touched her wet hand to his forehead and blessed him.

With wonder in his eyes, he fixated on the tenor soloist as he sang You Raise Me Up. He smiled at the children who presented him with gifts: a story Bible, a hand-painted stone bearing the word “beloved,” a taper candle.

As I scanned the audience, searching unsuccessfully for a pair of dry cheeks, I understood: This is love. This is community. This is baptism. Amen

Seeing God

2011-09-11T00:44:00.000-04:00

I want to show a video version of a joke by the American comedian Emo Philips. An online poll conducted on the website Ship of Fools determined that it was the funniest religious joke of all time. (Show “The Heretic”) http://youtu.be/M0zIv2I37UU

We might not agree that this is the funniest religious joke of all time. It does illustrate the danger of “triumphalism”- the notion that your brand of religion has “the right answers”, and therefore is in God’s favour, and everybody else is a heretic. This attitude is not the exclusive property of any one religion. This need to be right, and tendency to be arrogant can be found amongst people of every known religion. It may come across as strength, but it is basically rooted in our fears and insecurities. We can feel better about ourselves if we can label our rival as being wrong.

All through history, leaders have exploited human weakness, and often used religion as a means to whip people up into a frenzy, to promote war against the enemy of the day.

We have heard a lot about how Osama Bin Laden and other leaders of Al Qaeda used a radicalized version of Islam to manipulate young men to undertake suicide missions. It has been a challenge to not get caught up in the simplistic notion that these people are a fair representation of their faith. They represent Islam in the same way that the Ku Klux Klan represents Christianity. You can wrap hatred in the holy cloth of any religion, and it is still hatred.

I remember that in the days following September 11, 2001, the U.S. president George W. Bush repeatedly, deliberately referred to the American response to the attacks as a crusade.

The word crusade carries such historic and symbolic power. It is derived from the Latin word for cross. When a U.S. President who had previously described himself as a born again Christian used the word Crusade to describe the “war against terror”, he was both buying into, and promoting the idea that the conflict could be understood in very simple terms. The West is Christian, and therefore Good. Its enemies are not Christian, and therefore Evil. It was an evitable consequence that Islam as a religion, and perhaps even all Muslims, would be suspect.

In the atmosphere of fear and helplessness after the September 11 attacks, simple answers were desirable, even if they did not adequately or fairly address the real issues. It once again became acceptable to paint people of a certain religion, or racial background, with the same brush, and see them all as the enemy.

Three years ago I did the funeral for a humble, quiet man named Doug, who was in his late eighties when he died. Over the 10 years I knew him, he told me many stories from the memoir he was writing. Doug grew up in a fishing village on the B.C. coast. When he was a young man during World War Two the Canadian government, for reasons of National Security, arrested his family, removed them to a prison camp, and seized all their property because their ancestors were from Japan. His whole life, and the lives of his siblings, was torn apart, and never restored. Their land, their home, their boat, and other personal property were never returned. His father died in the interment camp, and my friend put off his own education for many years, so that he could care for his family.

My friend Doug was born and raised a Christian, first a Methodist, and when the United Church was formed, his family became United. Part of why Doug was willing to tell me the stories of his life was that he had fond memories of, and great gratitude for the church. His life was touched by a United Church minister who ignored the prejudice and propaganda of war-time, and did amazing pastoral and compassionate work amongst Canadian citizens of Japanese ancestry. Doug was introduced to his future wife by this man, and later on, he officiated at their wedding. Doug also told me that this man was basically run out of one of the churches he served, because of his openness towards non-white Canadians.

People can do incredibly noble, and shockingly cruel things in the name of their version of God. I want to share a quote with you, from an author named Karen Armstrong. In 2009, she was interviewed for an educational website called “Big Think”. http://bigthink.com/ideas/17653

“The trouble with a lot of modern theology and a lot of modern thinking about God, is that we think of God as sort of being like ourselves, but bigger and better with likes and dislikes similar to our own. Now, as the great Protestant theologian, Paul Tillich said, "That's an idolatry. That's making a God in our own image." And that's where some of the awful atrocities of religion happen when people assume that God shares your likes and dislikes. The Crusaders when into battle to kill Muslims and Jews and cried, "God will's it." That was their battle cry. Obviously God willed no such thing. The Crusaders were simply projecting onto a deity they’d created on their own image and likeness, all their hatred and loathing of these faiths and made it endorse some of their most awful prejudices and lethal prejudices. And modern terrorists do the same. And that is why the theologians insisted before the modern period, that it was really better to approach God in silence.”

In the same interview, Karen Armstrong quoted a Sufi philosopher who lived in the 13^th century. The Sufis are the mystics of Islam- people who have sought, and found, experience of the presence of God in a deeply personal way, that changes how they view the institution of their religion. This mystic, Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi wrote:

"Do not praise your own faith exclusively so that you disbelieve all the rest. If you do this, you will miss much good, nay, you will miss the whole truth of the matter. God, the omnipotent, omniscient, cannot be confined by any one creed. For he says in the Koran, wheresoever he turn, there is the face of Allah. Everybody praises what he knows. His God is his own creature and in praising it, he praises himself, which he would not do if he were just. But his dislike is based on ignorance."

These words call us to humility, and to openness of minds and hearts. This year the Sunday School will be using a new curriculum called “A Joyful Path”. It goes beyond the traditional Bible stories, to include stories and reflections from people of faith we do not always hear from. This week one of the quotes came from Meister Eckhart, a Christian priest and mystic, who wrote theology in the 14^th century. He said,

“Apprehend God in all things, for God is in all things. Every single creature is full of God and is a book about God. Every creature is a word of God! If I spent enough time with the tiniest creature - even a caterpillar -- I would never have to prepare a sermon, so full of God is every creature.”

I love that, except for the part about not listening to sermons! I found quotes, from some other mystics, that express very similar ideas:

“The ocean speaks and the mountains have tongues –
That is the everyday speech of the Buddha.
If you can speak and hear such words,
You are one who truly comprehends the universe.” (Dogen Kigen (circa 1265) Japan, Zen Buddhist)

“Every leaf of the tree
becomes a page of the sacred scripture
once the soul has learned to read. “ (Sheikh Muslih-uddin Sa'di Shirazi (1213 -1293) Iranian Muslim)

“God writes the Gospel,
not in the Bible alone,
but also on trees,
and in the flowers and clouds and stars.” Martin Luther (1483 - 1546)

We don’t have any choice about the cultures and traditions into which we are born. These writers, who lived in different parts of the world, caught glimpses of the Holy in their daily experience. They grew up in religions that have their own ways to talk about God, but they were each able to say that God is not boxed in by their group’s teachings. God is beyond particular religions. God is at work in the whole of creation. God is not anyone’s exclusive property. God is the creator and lover of all.

In this community of faith, we are drawn together by the teachings of Jesus. Jesus used words and actions to help us see God, in ourselves, in our neighbours, and in the world. Jesus taught us to break bread and pour the cup, and offer the hospitality of a sacred meal. Communion is a meal of radical inclusion. We welcome anyone who is hungry for God, to join us.

Jesus taught that hunger for God is a very good sign. It shows that we are looking beyond ourselves. We are opening ourselves to see God.

I want to return to the passage Ellen read to us this morning from Matthew’s Gospel, that is often called the Beatitudes. Jesus was talking to people who were looking for hope, and meaning for life. They wanted to know that they were not alone, and that God was with them. With wisdom and compassion that is desperately needed in our world today, Jesus said,

"You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and God’s rule. You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you. You're blessed when you're content with just who you are—no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought. You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. God's food and drink in the best meal you'll ever eat. You're blessed when you care. At the moment of being 'care-full,' you find yourselves cared for. You're blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world. You're blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That's when you discover who you really are, and your place in God's family.” Matthew 5:3-9 (The Message)

Amen

Homer Simpson asks God a Question

2011-08-21T09:07:00.000-04:00

I’ve had good feedback on this series based on faith questions . One person said it has primed the pump in their mind, and reminded them of questions they’ve had for a long time. I am glad. It is important that Trinity be a place where questions are welcomed, and encouraged.

Questions aren’t always comfortable. At times we might prefer to have all the answers, and perhaps have answers that are as simple as possible. This cartoon is about someone who feels like they are overwhelmed, maybe even drowning in questions.

David Hayward, the cartoonist, has a web-based ministry called “The Naked Pastor”. He emails a new cartoon each day, to people on his list. This is what he says about this drawing:

“The Discovery Channel says that if you get stuck in quicksand, the worst thing you can do is struggle. They say that if you fall into quicksand, “resist the natural instinct to kick your way out.” Instead, they suggest to “you need to stay calm and lean back“. Then, “as you begin floating, slowly start moving your feet“. That’s how you survive quicksand.

Pretty good advice for surviving questions. I mean serious death-threatening questions. There are many who don’t deal with questions at all. So they don’t travel. They set up camp in one spot and stay there the rest of their lives, risking nothing, endangered by nothing, learning nothing. But if you want to learn and grow, then it means travel, and it means maybe falling into the quicksand of questions.

So what do you do? Same thing:

1. Do not struggle.

2. Stay calm.

3. Start moving slowly.

This has worked for me. Once you learn to relax and allow the questions to come, they eventually lose their threatening character and will sustain you in order for you to move on. Answers may come but they never replace the questions. They join together to form a mysterious thing called Wisdom.”

Today’s question is: “Is religion necessary?” Our guest commentator is Homer Simpson. In this video clip, Homer is in a conversation with God. (view clip)

Homer’s impression of church is you give up your free time to listen to a boring sermon, and be told that you are going to hell unless you follow all the rules, all the time. My guess is that there are a lot of people who would agree with Homer.

Speaking of homers! Last week I mentioned my son’s baseball team made it to their league finals, and finished in second place. At the end of one game there was a fascinating moment.

My son’s team was ahead by one run, but the other team had last at bats. They had two runners on base, and two outs, and tension was mounting. If they could get those runners home, they would win. We also knew that the clock was ticking. The league has a curfew. No game can go past 8:25 pm, and no new inning can start after 8:15 pm.

The count was 2 balls and 1 strike. Our pitcher threw his best fast ball, and the batter got a little piece of it, and hit a foul ball. So now there were 2 balls, and 2 strikes. Just as the pitcher was starting his windup, the umpire called “Dead Ball”.

The batter stood there, looking a little confused. Our coach said loudly to the umpire, “Really? You’re not going to let them play this out?”

The conversation amongst the parents sitting in the bleachers was lively. We realized if play continued, and the curfew rule was ignored, our team might lose the game. Our coach was setting aside his concern for winning, because he wanted to be fair to the other teams’ batter.

The coaches conferred with the umpire, and agreed to let the batter finish. The Orioles pitcher threw another strike. The batter swung and missed. The game was over, again.

Baseball is a game of rules. The rules are there to keep things fair for everyone. But there are times when the rules seem inadequate. That’s true not just in baseball, but in life.

Jesus was often accused of breaking the rules of the Jewish religion. I think Jesus was trying to do was help people see the purpose of religion was to help people feel more connected to God, rather than giving them more reasons to feel unworthy.

The story I read this morning described Jesus and his friends facing criticism from the Pharisees, the keepers of Jewish law, for picking heads of grain as they walked along a field. The issue was not that they were taking the grain, but that they were doing work on the Sabbath. The Sabbath was the day that Jewish people were to set aside for rest and prayer, and there were long and complicated prohibitions of all the things they were not supposed to do. Never mind that Jesus and his friends might have been hungry, and far from home.

Jesus countered the critical comments by reminding the Pharisees of the story of David, the warrior king of Israel, who fed his hungry soldiers bread that had been blessed and set aside only for the use of the priests. Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. “

That line has been interpreted in many ways over the last 20 centuries. I take it to mean that the rules and structures of religion may be important, but not more important than the whole point of religion, which is to help people live in relationship with the mystery of God.

My personal opinion is that most of what we call religion is human-made. We get into trouble with religion when we get stuck on the idea that our rules, or more honestly, our interpretation of the rules, is absolutely right, and given to us by God. There might be less conflict over religion if we learned to say, with humility, that the things we teach about God, and how to live faithfully, are the best ideas we currently have, and that they are a work in progress.

It is pretty common to hear people say that they are spiritual, but not religious. I think what that means is that people have an appetite, or an instinct, a hunger for something beyond themselves. They either sense, or are curious about this something. They connect that mysterious something to their own questions about life’s meaning, and about how they should act, and about what happens when you die. These are all deeply spiritual issues.

The irony is that these kind of questions are exactly what we have in common with other human beings. It would seem to make sense to try to gather with other people, who have these questions, and work together, to find ways to live with these questions. But often, people with spiritual questions stay as far away as possible from organized religion, because of things that have been said and done in the name of religion. Things like telling hungry people they can’t work to feed themselves on the Sabbath. That kind of religion is not necessary!

The kind of religion I believe can become absolutely necessary for life is one that offers a humble interpretation of its own tradition, and can admit that the tradition is not perfect. It can draw on the scriptures, and stories, and ideas it has collected, and apply them to current questions about the meaning of life, and to what is worth doing with our lives.

The kind of religion I think is necessary helps people have hope, and offers them the tools they need to negotiate their own lives. It does not tell people what to do, but helps them think for themselves.

The kind of religion I think is necessary helps us create communities in which people can gather, with their questions, and their fears, and also their hopes, and their inspired ideas, and receive not condemnation but encouragement. Amen

Questions of Faith: What is Happiness?

2011-08-15T16:39:00.000-04:00

The Monty Python clip offers a humorous reminder of the power of questions, and of the dangers of setting yourself up as someone who knows all the answers, to all the questions. I was aware, when I decided to do a sermon series based on faith questions offered by Trinity folks, that I might end up like the wise guy on the bridge of death. He was the one who tripped on his own cleverness, and was plucked off his perch by the same unseen forces that grabbed the poor travellers who failed his test.

I received some very good responses to my request. Not many, but in something like this, it’s quality rather than quantity. Here is one note I received, in its entirety. It tells you a lot about the depth of thought of the person who wrote it:

“ Assuming one is leading a comfortable life (i.e. has family and friends, food and shelter, OK job, etc), is it a rejection of or lack of faith in God to be dissatisfied with one's life?

In other words, if one truly has gratitude and faith in God, will contentment or a sense of peace follow?

Is anxiety or discontentment or just general unhappiness the result of not having a sense of a universal presence, or God?

The writer went on to say:

I understand that a person will be sad if something tragic happens such as a catastrophic injury or death of a child. But I am wondering if for a lot of people psychological misery results from being disconnected from a sense of wonder, of timelessness, of God.

To push the question further- Is being miserable un-Christian?”

There is so much good stuff in that letter. Next week I want to talk a bit about whether or not religion is a necessary aspect of life. Today I want to talk about happiness.

Saint Paul, who wrote the letter to the Phillipans, had found a way to be happy, regardless of his circumstances. In the words of the paraphrase from The Message, “Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am.” His happiness did not depend on his reputation, or his worldly power. He did not measure his life by the accuracy of his golf swing, or the size of his bank account, or the brand name of anything he owned. He probably owned very little. It might be easy to use his words to suggest that we would be happier, if we were less affluent. But that kind of generalisation can be insulting to people who are struggling to live each day.

The story from the Sufi tradition suggests that sadness and happiness are both temporary conditions. “This too shall pass” could be paraphrased as “Don’t get too used to things the way they are. Don’t rely on the outward things to keep you smiling, and also know that the things that bring you down will not last.” This may seem trite to say to someone who is in grief, or very ill- but there is truth in there. The cause of grief- the loss of a loved one, cannot be undone, but the grief itself does pass, eventually.

What the Sufi story of the ring, with the inscription “This too shall pass” is meant to teach, is the possibility of detachment, of stepping back from our experience, and looking at it, contemplating it.

I read a joke in Readers Digest while waiting for my daughter at the orthodontist. A student approaches their professor, and asks, “What does contemplation mean?” The professor says, “Think about it.” The student says, “Seriously, what does it mean?”

Contemplatives are people, who, through the use of a spiritual practice such as prayer, or meditation, develop the capacity to detach, or un-attach themselves, even if only for a moment at a time, from the busyness and complications of their lives. According to Wikipedia:

The word contemplation comes from the Latin word contemplatio. Its root is also that of the Latin word templum, a piece of consecrated ground, or a building for worship, derived either from an earlier language base *tem- "to cut", and so a "place reserved or cut out" or from the base *temp- "to stretch", and thus referring to a cleared space in front of an altar.

I like the idea of clearing some spiritual space in my life, if only for a moment or two at a time. From a Christian perspective, the space that gets cleared is not actually empty. It is a space in which we are more able to be with God, who is always there, even when our lives are so cluttered that we can’t or don’t notice that God is there.

One of my contemplative heroes is Thomas Keating, a Cistercian monk and priest. He is a prominent teacher of the spiritual discipline called Centering Prayer. Keating has an interesting perspective on happiness. He believes that every one of us comes into the world with instinctual needs for survival and security, affection and esteem and approval, and power and control. The craving for these things is essential to our surviving early childhood. But the reality of life in our imperfect world is that every child is to some degree deprived of these basics.

Keating sees a connection between how a child’s instinctual needs are met, and the child’s success at establishing a meaningful relationship with God. If that connection to God is not established in a healthy, life-giving way, the person may seek happiness by compulsively seeking to fulfill those instinctual needs for security, and esteem, and power.

Like the country song says, people end up looking for love in all the wrong places. We end up chasing wealth, or influence, or popularity in order to feel happy. Keating names this as addictive behavior. Addiction to wealth and possessions, to popularity and power are as dangerous as addiction to alcohol or drugs. Being driven by any of these compulsions is like trying to fill a bottomless pit, because we never actually get enough to really be satisfied, because these substitutes can’t take the place of what we actually to be at peace, and happy.

If we focus only on what we want, and think we need, we end up living a selfish existence. The things we crave take the place of real relationships with people, and with God. People make idols of money, or possessions, or power, or food, or alcohol, or other drugs, or sex. They shape their lives around acquiring what they think they want and need, whether or not it is truly good for them.

I think it is also possible to be addicted to a false idea about ourselves, that will keep us from being happy, as long as we hold onto it.

Another of my contemplative heroes, the Benedictine nun Joan Chittister says, “Happiness comes when clinging goes.” She also says, “ Happiness is the ability to live every day, every phase, every stage of life in the awareness that it will not be ours forever- and that is just as it should be if we are to grow and live, live and grow. “

I was talking with someone this week who finds happiness each day in remembering about himself that he is a person who can do small things to help others. I think he is on to something there. Happiness is something we help produce in the world, rather than just sitting back and expecting to receive it. Rather than trying to hold onto it, we do our best to give it away. Amen

The cat's in the cradle

2011-06-19T00:14:00.000-04:00

Video Presentation: Cat’s in the Cradle, based on the song made famous by Harry Chapin

http://youtu.be/G2uNzwkVVuY

(link to the video)

Reflection:

I have had this song stuck in my head. It was originally recorded by the American folk-singer Harry Chapin. The version we just heard was recorded by an artist who calls himself Ugly Kid Joe. The video was made by a student at Glen Cove High School on Long Island, New York. It looks like he enlisted all the generations of men in his family to help tell the story. There is something about a young man and his family working together on this project that I find very touching. I hope he got a good grade!

There are a number of YouTube videos based on this song. In their own way, they each re-tell the story of a father who is delighted with the gift of a baby boy, but never seems to figure out how to live out of that delight.

The verses of the song describe important periods in the life of this boy, at which he is inviting his father to be with him, to spend time with him, to have a relationship with him. The deep sadness of this story is that each time the boy asks for his father’s attention and time, the father finds something else to do. He says no, not now, but we’ll get together at a later time.

If you have heard this song as often as I have over the years, you may remember that the boy grows up, and eventually stops asking for his father’s time, and near the end, settles for asking for the car keys.

A shift happens, and by the end of the song, the father is the one asking for the time and attention of his son, who has learned from his father how to live, and be an adult. The son is now far too busy, and promises to get together with his father soon, and they will have a good time then.

This song touches my heart, and my experience in at least two ways. I hear it as a son, and recognize in myself the longing of the young boy, who just wants to know that his Dad would like to spend time with him. I also hear it as a father, and the song offers the pointed reminder that my children need, deserve, and thrive on the time I can be with them.

I think the lasting appeal of this song is linked to these two things- grief over time lost, and the reminder to value the relationships in our lives.

For those whose family relationships have been less than ideal, a song like this can bring to the surface the need for God’s grace, and love. We all need God’s help to accept the people in our lives, and ourselves. We need God’s grace to help us move from deep hurt and ancient longing to forgiveness. We need God’s love to help the needed healing continue in our hearts, and in the hearts of all those who have been wounded in life.

When I played this song during the communion service at Queens, one of the women said that she has always loved it, because it reminds her of what a great Dad she had when she was growing up. She later told me stories from 60 and 70 years ago, about what her father did and said when he would come home from work, and let each child in the house know how happy he was to see them. She spoke with joy, and with gratitude about her father. I don’t think it a coincidence that this woman is also deeply faithful.

The psalm that Greg read reminds us that one of the ways we imagine, or experience God is as a compassionate father. This is not the only way, but it is one of the ways.

I believe that we feel the touch of God, and get clues about how God relates to us, from our human relationships.

So there are questions that arise, that I think are worth considering on Father’s Day, and on a day when we have baptized children, and prayed that they will continue to grow in God’s love:

Are we experiencing love that is touched with the holy, in our human relationships?

Is there healing and growing that we need in order to be able to experience that love?

Are we offering love that is touched with the holy, in our human relationships?

Is there healing and growing that we need in order to be able to express that love?

Most of us have areas of our life where we need God’s help, and where things could be better.

Like the father and the son in the song, we want to get on this- before we end up feeling that it is too late! Amen

Living with Spirit

2011-06-11T23:12:00.000-04:00

People who teach writing theorize that there are actually only a handful of basic plots. Most stories we read, or watch, are variations on a few basic themes. The writing teachers go on to say that many people seek out stories that help them make sense of their own lives. They see something of their own story, in the adventures, or the misery, or both, of the characters in the book, or on the screen.

In the Christian Church we gather around the stories of Jesus. The stories he told, and the stories of what happened to him. Many of us have been learning these stories our whole lives. I heard them first when I was the age of some of our Sunday School kids. It did me a lot of good to learn those stories. They are part of me.

Recently I have been trying to read the stories, and think about them in a slightly different way. I have been looking to see if these stories are not just good for me- but are they, in some way, about me.

I have been helped with this by the writing of a man named Ronald Rolheiser. In a book called “The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality”, Rolheiser looked at the Jesus stories that began with his active ministry, led up to his death on the cross, moved to the hope of Easter morning, through the 40 days to Ascension Sunday, then on to Pentecost. Rolheiser suggests that all of these things did not just happen to Jesus and his friends. They also happen to us. Each of us experiences the cycle of life, and death, and resurrection.

Jesus led a vibrant and meaningful life, filled with both challenges and joys. He made good friends, and was loved and respected. But Jesus taught a radical message of God’s love that could not be bound by the structures of established religion, or limited by the political agenda of those in charge. This inevitably brought him into conflict with powerful people, and he was killed. Jesus died.

Jesus death did not surprise his friends, but it hurt and shocked them. Most of us know the pain of losing a loved one. Their death can leave us feeling like part of us died, or that we might as well be dead. We can feel totally powerless in the face of death, and unable to help ourselves, or make any difference.

But time passes, and somehow, life goes on. We make our way through those times that may have felt like we were stuck in a dark cave, and we begin to see glimpses of light. The Gospels tell stories of a period of forty days in which Jesus’ close friends continued to see him, hear him, have moments with him. These happened when two or more of them were together, and they were remembering Jesus, telling each other stories about things he had done or said. We do that too, when we lose a loved one. We keep them alive, inside of us, with our stories. We cherish those memories, and it may be that the sweetness of remembering carries over a bit into the rest of our day, and life actually seems kind of possible

The Jesus story did not end with his physical death. Those mysterious resurrection stories hint that God was still at work.

In our lives, we know the importance of taking the time to grieve the loss of a loved one. When I was serving churches in rural Manitoba, I was sometimes called to help with funerals for people from Doukhobor families. They were descended from people who came to the prairies in search of religious freedom. They were pacifists who refused to serve in the army of the Russian Czars. The community would have its traditional Russian language funeral, and then I would do one in English, for the friends and family who did not speak Russian.

Forty days later, I would be invited to gather again with the family and their friends, for a party. It was something like an Irish wake, but it marked the end of the official grief period. I thought that was so much better than some of the English families I worked with, who maybe gave themselves 2-3 days after the funeral, and then tried to dive back into regular life at full speed, as if everything was just fine. The blessing in the Doukhobor custom was that for those forty days, you were expected, and reminded to grieve. They got the time period of 40 days from the Bible.

Tradition says that there were forty days from Easter Sunday until the day of Ascension, when according to the story, Jesus was taken up physically into heaven, as eleven of the twelve disciples watched. You might remember I used a video clip from the end of the movie Mary Poppins when I preached about this story. When she realized that her work with the Banks family was complete, Mary Poppins flew off into the sky. A gust of wind pulled up her umbrella.

Whether it is with my Doukhobor friends, or with Jesus ascending, or Mary Poppins flying away, this is a goodbye moment. People say that an important stage in grieving is that moment when you actually, finally, totally realize that the person you have lost has been taken away.

Rolheiser said this is true not only of the grief we experience over the death of loved ones, but also of the other kinds of grief we live through. The loss of a home, or a job. The losses that come when a marriage ends. Even the grief attached to the loss of a dream, when it sinks in that not only is life not quite what we had hoped it would be, it never will be. Rolheiser used the example of a man in his mid-40’s who had to finally let go his dream of playing in the NHL. That had ceased to be a realistic hope many years before, but holding on to that false hope was standing in the way of enjoying, and being grateful for the good life he did have. He needed to feel the deep pain of the loss, and say a real goodbye, before he could actually live in the present.

I have heard it said that in order for a church like ours to really thrive in this day and age, we have to let go of a lot of the images of the way church used to be, and the way things were always done. Ultimately, we have to honour the fact that the past is the past, and we are meant to live and thrive now. We can grieve the good old days, and let it sink in that we are now in a different time.

Rolheiser pointed out that before Jesus is taken up into the sky, he offered them a blessing. Jesus told them that God’s Spirit would always be with them. Rolheiser suggested that even though the disciples had glimpses of new life after the first Easter, they actually needed the moment of the Ascension, to say their final goodbye, and let go of Jesus, before they could really live the new life.

That may be true for us as well. We have to give ourselves the time and space we need to truly grieve a loss, say goodbye to living in the past, and start living the new life.

10 days after that moment when the disciples said a final, official goodbye to Jesus, they were gathered in a house in Jerusalem. The story says that they were there for the feast of Pentecost, a harvest festival that was one of the big holy days for the Jews. Faithful people from many different places were in town for the festivities.

We heard earlier what happened that day. Tongues of fire, and rushing winds, and many different languages. A tremendous burst of energy. Thousands of people joined the disciples in the days that followed, and a new movement was born.

Rolheiser says that the disciples stopped clinging to the old life with Jesus, and accepted the spirit of their new lives. From that moment on, the story was about much more than Jesus. It was about all who follow him. In a profound way, you and I are, and those who come after us, are the next chapter of the story. Amen

Spiritual Exercises for hungry people

2011-06-04T19:25:00.000-04:00

I want to play a song for you by a man named Harry McClintock. It’s called the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

McClintock sang about a hobo’s paradise, where you never had to change your socks, and streams of alcohol trickled down the rocks. Where the brakemen tip their hats and the railroad police are blind. There's a lake of stew and the hens lay soft boiled eggs.

McClintock had himself been a hobo. He spent a lot of time with people who for their own reasons, had decided that riding the rails, working when they needed money, and taking handouts when they had no other choice, was the way to live.

He wrote his song in 1928, in an era when thousands of hobos were crossing America by rail. By 1939, his song reached #1 on Billboard’s Hillbilly Hits chart. The song spoke to people whose lives, and possibilities had been shaped by the Great Depression.

The song can be heard in different ways. It might be an anthem to a way of life that places freedom above everything else. It could also be an ironic expression of diminished hopes and dreams. Paradise might be imagined as a place in which you still had no home or family, but if you were arrested, at least you could escape easily, because the jail walls were made of tin.

It is an early country song, with its roots in Gospel music. Perhaps that is why I also hear the song as a prayer. The hobo may be praying that when he dies, he will go to a place where his constant sorrows and worries will be over. His picture of heaven consists of idealized images of the best day ever. Plenty to eat and drink, railroad cops that can’t keep up, and a warm barn in which to sleep. His hopes and dreams, and thoughts of heaven are anchored to the life he has known. It is hard to imagine something better for yourself, if you have never experienced anything better.

This reminds me of a story I may have used here before, but is one that stays with me:

"During the bombing raids of WWII, thousands of children were orphaned and left to starve. The fortunate ones were rescued and placed in refugee camps where they received food and good care. But many of these children who had lost so much could not sleep at night. They feared waking up to find themselves once again homeless and without food. Nothing seemed to reassure them. Finally, someone hit upon the idea of giving each child a piece of bread to hold at bedtime. Holding their bread, these children could finally sleep in peace. All through the night the bread reminded them, "Today I ate and I will eat again tomorrow." (Linn, Dennis et al, Sleeping With Bread, p.l)

For those children, the beginning of hope was to have bread enough for today. The beginning of being able to trust that they were loved and held precious was the assurance that there would be bread for tomorrow.

This morning we listened to this description from the second chapter of the Book of Acts:

"42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved."

These early Jesus followers were so touched by the message of God’s acceptance and love, that it became the most important thing in their lives. It mattered more to them than social status or power, or possessions. They began to see who they were- their identity in God’s eyes. Their response was to build a new community. This gathering was characterized by compassion for the needs of others, and simple joy in being together, breaking bread, and praising God. People were drawn to this new community in great numbers.

The sharing of resources so that all could be fed, what we might call an open table, may have began as a charitable response to hungry people. But there was more than that going on. I think they shared because it was such a natural way to demonstrate the hope and promise they found in God.

I also think that the earliest followers of Jesus may have taught people to share as a spiritual discipline. Sharing not just because it helps those who are fed, but because the act of sharing, of living as if we are generous, can change us, from the inside out.

Just as physical exercise changes our bodies, and over time makes a person more fit, and more able to tackle challenges, doing an act of kindness exercises our emotional and spiritual muscles, so that we are in better shape to be kind in the future.

An excellent way to become a faith-filled, joyful, unselfish person, is to find good examples, and do what they do.

I helped lead a silent retreat day last week, at the Five Oaks Centre near Brantford. Part of my role was to meet with people who had come there for a day away from the busyness of their lives, to free up some space in their lives. Five Oaks is a great place to do that, and I am part of a team of spiritual directors that take turns hosting these mini retreat days. We open and close the day with worship, and in between we are available for spiritual direction appointments, during which people can talk about their spiritual lives.

A woman in her early forties asked to meet with me for an hour of spiritual direction. She told me that church, and prayer, and spiritual questions had never been part of her life. The natural question to ask was what had drawn her to spend a day in prayerful retreat at a centre run by church people. She told me that even though she has a great job, makes lots of money, and has a good marriage, and children that she loves, she feels empty and joyless on the inside. She has lost any sense of purpose or meaning in her life, and feels driven by fear and obligation.

She told me that she has a neighbour who is in her sixties, who just seems wise and happy and at peace with herself. She has a generous spirit, and attracts a wide variety of friends, who seem able to handle what life sends their way, with joy, and humour, and grace. The woman I met with said that she wants to be more like that, so she came with her neighbour for a retreat day. She said, “ I want whatever she’s got.”

We learn real lessons, lessons that transform us, from the good examples in our lives.

When we gather here for worship, we place ourselves in a group of people who are looking for truth, and meaning, and love from a source beyond themselves. We gather with people who have some idea that they live in relationship with each other, and with God. We have not got it all figured out, and we make mistakes, but we keep working at it.

We try to follow the teachings, and the example of Jesus. We try to use what we have, and what we are able to share, to make and maintain a place where the lessons about love, and acceptance, and compassion can be lived out.

We gather here, not out of fear or obligation, but because it is good to be here. It does us good to be together, and to share the gifts we have been given.

On the days, or in the weeks or months in which we do not feel generous or joyful, it helps us to be around those who still do feel those things. Their enthusiasm can rub off, and into us.

Each time we share communion from this open table we are reissuing the invitation to live a life, rooted not in our own accomplishments and acquisitions, but in God’s generous love. Amen

spiritual GPS

2011-05-21T21:55:00.000-04:00

Over the last few weeks there have been news stories about the couple from Penticton, B.C. that became lost and stranded in the Nevada desert. Rita (Pronounced Cree-shun, according to news reports) Chretien was found after surviving on candy and melted snow for 47 days. Her husband Albert has yet to be found.

Rita said their GPS unit, which they had only recently acquired, directed them to make a turn which took them in the wrong direction. They ended up stuck in mud and ice on a steep, snowy hill, 20 miles from any paved road. Her husband left her in their van, walked off in search of help, and has not yet been found.

It’s a sad story. Along with the news coverage of the search for Albert Chretien, there has been plenty of commentary and opinion on the subject of the use of GPS devices. The consensus seems to be that the electronic maps produced by these portable navigation devices should not take the place of actually knowing where you are going. They should also not become a distraction from actually paying attention to road conditions, terrain, the time of day, and the weather.

We can hold this couple and their family in our prayers.

I heard another GPS story the other day from my father-in-law. Keith is in his eighties, so he has been driving for almost 70 years. He has driven just about anything you can imagine, and lived his whole life within 50 miles of where he was born. He knows all the highways and backroads of his home county.

He told me about a day last winter when the mail truck, a big transport that follows a regular route to all the local post offices in the area, was a couple of hours late. The truck and driver were found safe and sound, by some snowmobilers. The driver, who was new to the area, had believed his GPS when it showed him an apparent short cut. But the GPS could not account for the weather, or the volume of snow that collected in a dip in the roadway on a backroad that the locals know better than to use in snow season.

It’s easy to get lost, or stuck in a bad place, when you don’t really know where you are going. It is also possible to get yourself into real trouble, by ignoring good directions when you get them. We heard a bit in our second reading about Judas Iscariot. He is remembered as the disciple who turned away from Jesus, and accepted a bribe to tell the religious and political authorities where to find Jesus, on the night they wanted to arrest him.

We think of Judas as one of the villains in the story, along with the temple officials who had always seen Jesus as a rival, and the Romans, who saw his movement as a threat to stability. Judas is a more tragic figure in our eyes, because he had been an early follower of Jesus. Jesus had shown him a way to go, a way to live, and Judas chose to turn away from the holy path. He got himself lost, by deliberately veering off the road. His story is a good reminder that God offers us love, and a new way of living, but we still have free will, and can choose to go the wrong way.

I have used a definition of sin recently that I think is really apt. The word “sin” as it is used in the Bible, is related to words that mean missing the target, as in archery. Judas knew where he should have been aiming, but he chose to miss the mark, and that led him into a place of misery. The New Testament tells us Judas could not live with himself for what he had done, and he ended his own life.

The remaining eleven, of the original twelve members of Jesus’ inner circle decided to stick together, and continue the work that Jesus started. They wanted to pass on the message of love and freedom for all of God’s children. They felt it was important to choose someone to take Judas’ place. It had to be someone who was a follower of Jesus, and who had been witness to the mysterious things that had happened since the Passover Festival weekend.

A few months ago I spent the afternoon at the McMichael Gallery in Kleinburg with Rev. David Walker. I had been there before, as a volunteer on one of my children’s school field trips. But going with David was so much better. The docent who led the class around the gallery seemed more concerned with keeping the kids in line than helping them appreciate the pictures. She kept saying, “Children, look at me, listen to me!” I didn’t think they were there to look at a tour guide!

When I walked through the same galleries with David, he never once said, “look at me!” Instead, he said, “Would you look at that! ”, or he would ask, “Can you see what the artist did there?”

There is a difference between looking and seeing. You can look at a painting, but if you have not learned what to look for, you may not see much in it. Another artist, or a good teacher who has learned what to look for, can help you see details in the creation that you might otherwise miss.

You can look at the little screen on the GPS, but unless you have all the information you need, you may not be able to interpret what it shows you, in a helpful way. The screen gives you a glimpse, but not the whole picture.

The disciples became followers of Jesus because he helped them see a new way of living, and a new way of understanding God’s love for them. Jesus pointed down a different road than they might have travelled, if they had never met him, or heard his message.

Jesus showed them that life is more about living for others than ourselves. Jesus gave them glimpses of a reality beyond this earthly life. That may be why they were still able to see him, even after he died. Jesus helped them open their eyes to see details in God’s creation that they might have missed, without the help of a good teacher.

The disciples were looking for someone to join them who had learned how to see. Someone who had been with them long enough to understand what they were all about. Someone who had known the earthly Jesus, and heard his teachings about God, and who had also experienced the presence of what they were calling the Risen Christ. They wanted someone who knew what they were talking about when they said that somehow, even though Jesus had died, he was still with them.

When the disciples were ready to choose someone to take the place of Judas, it had to be someone who shared their passion and excitement for passing the message on to others- so they could also learn to see. They had to be careful to choose a guide who knew that it was not all about themselves, but about the beauty and power of the work of art they had to show people.

This may have been one of the first “command” decisions the disciples had to make. When the earthly Jesus was with them, he was the master, the teacher, the leader. He picked the disciples, and he gave the marching orders. Now it was time for the disciples to use discernment. The story says that they ”nominated two: Joseph Barsabbas, nicknamed Justus, and Matthias.”

Then the disciples showed that they were ready to lead. They did what we all need to do, when we faced with an important choice, and need to know the right direction. They prayed.

"You, O God, know every one of us inside and out. Make plain which of these two you choose to take the place in this ministry…”

They asked God to guide their steps, and to help them find their way. Amen

The next chapter

2011-05-12T14:51:00.000-04:00

How many of you have seen the Disney movie Mary Poppins? It is actually 46 years old! Mary Poppins is the story of a magical nanny who appeared in an upper middle class English household just when they need her most. She came sailing in on the wind, literally, floating through the air, upheld by her umbrella.

With her messages of love, and adventure, and openness to new experience and new people, she nurtures the two children of the Banks household. The children, Jane and Michael, are transformed from the brattish hellions into loving, kind, and generous young people. Much of this transformation happens because of the effect Mary Poppins has on their Mother and Father. She helps them look upon their children with love rather than mere tolerance, and re-discover the delight of actually spending time with them, rather than being absorbed in themselves.

Along the way there is magic and singing and dancing, and humour. These provide the spoonful of sugar needed for the viewer to swallow the medicine, or the moral of the story. If parents don’t actively love their kids, they can lose them.

We are going to watch a short clip from right near the end of the movie. The Banks family is getting along famously, having been transformed by the message of love. Mary Poppins sees that her work is done, and it is time for her to leave. It is time for them to carry on, with all that she has taught them, and with the spirit of love that gave life to her teaching.

It is apparently not easy for her to go. She has grown to deeply love this family, Jane and Michael. (View the clip.)

We are in the season between Easter and Pentecost. At Easter, we heard the mysterious story of Jesus’ resurrection. The four Gospels in the New Testament all have stories of Jesus reappearing to his closest friends, despite the fact that they had watched him die on the cross, and witnessed the burial of his body.

Christian tradition has taught that after the first Easter, Jesus continued to appear to his followers for forty days. Forty is a very biblical number. Noah built an ark to save his family and the animals from 40 days and nights of rain. The Israelites wandered the desert for 40 years in their search for the Promised Land. Jesus is said to have spent 40 days in the wilderness, in deep prayer before embarking on his public ministry.

40 days after Easter, it is time to begin a new chapter in the story. In his last appearances to his friends, Jesus told them about the Holy Spirit, who would always be with them. Tradition holds that Jesus must now leave them, so that the Holy Spirit can come, and be guide and inspiration.

The Jewish scriptures, which would have been well known to the Gospel writers include two stories of people being taken bodily up into heaven. One was a man named Enoch, who according to the book of Genesis, was a descendant of Adam and Eve, and an ancestor, of Noah. The Old Testament says that he lived 365 years, walked with God, and then was taken away. The other was the prophet Elijah, who you heard about in the reading this morning.

In this story, Elijah had reached the end of his earthly life, and he knew it. He was travelling with his protege’, a younger man named Elisha, who also knew that Elijah had to say goodbye. They came to a place where it is necessary to cross the Jordan river.

“ Elijah took his cloak, rolled it up, and hit the water with it. The river divided and the two men walked through on dry land.

When they reached the other side, Elijah said to Elisha, "What can I do for you before I'm taken from you? Ask anything."

Elisha said, "Your life repeated in my life. I want to be a holy man just like you."

"That's a hard one!" said Elijah. "But if you're watching when I'm taken from you, you'll get what you've asked for. But only if you're watching."

And so it happened. They were walking along and talking. Suddenly a chariot and horses of fire came between them and Elijah went up in a whirlwind to heaven. Elisha saw it all and shouted, "My father, my father! You—the chariot and cavalry of Israel!" When he could no longer see anything, he grabbed his robe and ripped it to pieces. Then he picked up Elijah's cloak that had fallen from him, returned to the shore of the Jordan, and stood there. He took Elijah's cloak—all that was left of Elijah!—and hit the river with it, saying, "Now where is the GOD of Elijah? Where is he?"

When he struck the water, the river divided and Elisha walked through. “

Elijah’s cloak in Elisha’s hands becomes the symbol that he has inherited Elijah’s prophetic role.

In the Jesus story there is no cloak, no symbol that is passed on to the disciples, but the moment, and the message, are very similar.

“ When they were together for the last time the disciples asked Jesus, "Master, are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel now? Is this the time?"

He told them, "You don't get to know the time. Timing is the Father's business. What you'll get is the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit comes on you, you will be able to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, all over Judea and Samaria, even to the ends of the world."

Instead of a cloak to represent their role as Jesus’ witnesses, the disciples are promised the Holy Spirit, which will enable them to go out into the world, sharing the Good News of God’s love. It is time for them to carry on, with all that Jesus has taught them, and with the spirit of love that gave life to his teaching.

It’s a good story, filled with the power of mystery and imagination. It seems pretty clear that the Gospel writers drew on their knowledge of the prophet Elijah, when describing this last appearance of Jesus to his closest friends. Scholars have observed that in the ancient world, there were many stories of kings, heroes, prophets or holy men being taken up into the realm of the gods. It was a way of saying that they were divinely blessed, and that their message would live on.

In the ancient world, they viewed the earth, and the universe around it very differently than we do. They had what I have sometimes called the “layer cake” view. Our world was the middle layer. Hell was the layer below, and heaven, the realm of the gods, was right above.

With this cosmology, this understanding of the architecture of the universe, it made perfect sense to talk about a hero descending into the depths of Hades, or ascending bodily into heaven.

But that is not how we see things in our day. When we talk about Heaven being up, and Hell being down, we are usually only being poetic.

The part of the Ascension stories that still comes through strong is the idea of a job being passed on. It’s like the relay race of faith. Elijah passed the baton to Elisha. Jesus passed it on to his disciples. And with the Gospel stories, the disciples have passed it along to us. . It is time for us to carry on, with all that he has taught, and with the spirit of love that gives life to his teaching.

Amen

Sermon: “Where’s my village?”

2011-05-07T23:40:00.000-04:00

On the west coast of Africa there is a country called Sierra Leone. The name of their country is Spanish for “Lion Mountains”, which connects nicely with that scene we watched on Pride Rock, from the Lion King. I read this week about a wonderful custom that happens in some Christian congregations in Sierra Leone. On the night before an infant baptism, the oldest woman in the family takes the young child in her arms for a guided tour of the village.

She walks down the streets of the town, pointing out significant places to the babe in her arms:

Here is the school where you will go to learn how to read.

This is the house of your aunt and uncle who will help take care of you.

Watch out for this house, because it is full of danger, and you can lose your way.

This is the church where you will be baptized.

This is where you will learn the stories of Jesus.

Though the young child will not consciously remember this walk and talk, it is still a beautiful thing to do. I think it must mean a lot to the grandmother, or great-grandmother, or beloved aunt that has this privilege, this responsibility.

There is a well known saying, “It takes a village to raise a child.”

The woman who carried the child, and points to the sources of help and hope in the community, and also points out the dangers, knows that no parents, no family, can do it alone. They need good people around them.

The oldest woman in the family holds the infant. The baby at the beginning of their earthly life, and the woman much closer to the end than the beginning. The best stories almost always have the hints of beginnings and endings in them. Life and death. How to live, and how to find meaning in life, and how to deal with the realities we all face. The questions are all there, unspoken, but present, as the woman walks around her village, with the baby in her arms.

The old woman’s walk with the little baby in her arms is a prayer, a blessing, and a promise. She represents a community of faith that exists to welcome that child, to encourage her family, and to nurture faith.

The old woman is the church, and God, and every good mother, all blended together. Amen

God says, "Yes, and..."

2011-04-24T00:31:00.000-04:00

We have a new favourite tv show at our house. It’s called The Big Bang Theory. It is about a group of PhD level scientists, who are at the top in their field in theoretical physics, but who have limited social skills. The humour flows from their nerdy attempts to function in the world outside the laboratory. Sheldon, Howard, Leonard and Rajeesh get much needed help from their friend Penny, an actress who pays the rent by working as a waitress. Penny does not have any college degrees, but she is kind, and wise. She also has a good sense of humour.

In one episode the most uptight and socially limited of the geniuses, Sheldon, learns the students he lectures in theoretical physics think he is the worst teacher in the known universe. He asks Penny to give him acting lessons.

Let’s watch! (short clip from The Big Bang Theory)

My family found this interesting, because my daughter just completed an eight week Improv class, and we all went to the final performance. The teacher, a talented actress and comedian named Amy McKenzie explained that a basic principle of Improv is “Yes, and…” The actor is challenged to accept what has just happened on stage, and somehow add to it, improve upon it, carry the creation forward.

The actor has to be flexible, and find useful ways to respond. They have to keep an open mind. If the actor freezes, from fear, or confusion, or because they don’t like what’s happening, it can mean an awkward and abrupt end to the scene.

Improv is tough on an actor. They have to deal with things that are beyond their control. Sometimes the other actors have made a mess, and they need someone to make the right move, or say the thing that will get things going again in a good direction.

I was thinking that in some ways, this is how it must be for God. Humans are on the stage of life, and we are free to say and do whatever we want- we have free will. Sometimes our choices are wonderful, and wondrous things can flow from our words and actions. Other times we make a huge and awful mess.

On Good Friday we remembered the story of Jesus dying on a cross. To me, this is a story of a human made mess. People who felt threatened by Jesus, and all he represented, conspired to kill him. His death was an unspeakably cruel response to a loving and peaceful man, who gave his life and spirit to show others the love of God.

How does God respond? It is conceivable that the evil of crucifying such a good man would have been enough reason for God to say, “No, I can’t work with that!” We could imagine God’s divine hands washing themselves clean of all humanity.

But God, the Ultimate Improv Artist looked upon the death of Jesus, one of his beloved children, and said, (at least in my imagination) “Yes, and….”

Somehow, God accepted the situation, and found a way to work with it- to allow that evil act to result in good. The revolutionary faith movement that had begun with Jesus was not stopped. Jesus’ friends experienced the Risen Christ. Wondrously, mysteriously, Jesus was still with them.

Jesus’ friends and disciples were offered a way to carry on. The message of God’s love could not be silenced, even by the worst that humans could do.

God does not give up on mending the world, making things right. God is not scared away by pain, or cruelty, or disaster. God is right there in the middle of it all, with us.

This is Good News, not just for the disciples 2000 years ago, but for any of us, all of us, who find ourselves in a bad scene. We all have them. We all experience loss, and heartache. Loved ones dies, or leave us in other ways. Situations change. Jobs are lost. Relationships fall apart. Illness comes upon us. There is so much that is out of our control.

The empty tomb on Easter morning can be a symbol for us of the fact that God does not give up on us. God looks at the worst mess we can make, and says, “Yes, and, let’s try this…”

Happy Easter! Amen