George Hermanson

Unexpected Happenings

2013-06-15T08:21:12-07:00

Unexpected Happenings
June16, 2013
Luke 7: 36 - 8:3
The Rev. Dr. George Hermanson
Picture the room when the dinner is being held. A group of men is at a table and they are eating in the Roman style. That means two people on a couch, this is so intimate conversations can happen. Those gathered are the elite of the village - those who are the learned in the Law.
They have gathered to listen to this new rabbi on the scene. They know he has been making a fuss in the area. He is suggesting that the kingdom of God is in opposition to the Roman Empire. They have a hunger for a fresh vision of their faith. So there they are. At dinner.
Into the room bursts a woman, whose reputation is known to all. They are scandalized by her presence. First, because she is a woman and this is not her place. And also because of what they know about her. She should not be there.
The scandal is increased because she pours out fine ointment. She touches Jesus’ feet and wipes them with her tears, drying them with her hair. At this act, the room would have exploded - it is one of the most intimate - personal - activity a woman could do to a man. And she is a sinner. In the protocol of the times Jesus should have responded with horror. And he doesn’t.
Simeon, the host, is affronted by Jesus’ response. As far as he concerned, he has been dishonoured. Jesus recognizes the negativity around him and speaks a common sense wisdom saying. He catches Simeon because Simeon knows the answer. He knows in a transactional world the greater the debt the greater is the forgiveness and the gratitude.
Luke wants us to identify with Simeon. He is rule bound. He knows what hospitality is. Yet he has not done what he ought to have done. He forgot the first rule of hosting. As well, he is repulsed by an act of Holy Hospitality. He is caught by his world view, what he thinks is proper religiously and socially. He has tried to domesticate Jesus.
Jesus cannot be domesticated. He welcomes the woman. He is not worried about her past. He is only concerned with her future. He responds in unexpected ways. This is the character of the God he worships. A God of holy hospitality where the boundaries are broken.
Jesus addresses the issue of need. What does this woman need? It is forgiveness and being thanked for her boldness.   Compassion and persuasion create an open future, a world where transactional values are gone. If you do this for me I will do that for you. No, it is a Grace that is given with no strings attached. I don’t know about you but there are times when I wish my world was not challenged by the needs of those at the edge of our vision. It would be more tidy.
However, that is not how the inspiration of God comes to us. It is always a wildness of the power of love. Old habits are called into question. Old ways of thinking about the world are called into question.
This is the power of the narrative for it gives us many viewpoints, and people to identify with. We are all the actors in the story. The issues force us to shift our identity.   The woman: She knows what she needs. She comes searching for healing even if it causes a disturbance. She has a boldness, for she knows what she is doing has crossed the boundaries. In fact, it has made her even more suspect. What is clear is that she has heard of Jesus, maybe even seen Jesus in action. She knows there is holy hospitality in his presence. She knows she can find release and healing. So she crosses over, demands inclusion.
This narrative reminds us that Jesus knew her background and it did not matter.   In the economy of God it is the present that counts. True there are things in all of our pasts that we wish were not there. All of us have done things of which we are not proud. However, that is the past and the past does not determine the present or the future. It only does when we run on habits of the mind and habits can be overcome. Sure it is not an easy task to break destructive habits but we are not determined by them. An insight from cognitive behavioural therapy is, we can bring to consciousness and make visible those shadow sides of our experience. When we do, they are de-powered. Those things that will influence our actions are created in the present moment. This demands awareness and knowledge of what we need.
Like the woman we can demand that the past not determine our identity.
Remembrance is always a double edge sword - it can cut and leave us in negative space, or it can cut in a positive direction, and free us. Jesus addresses the woman’s need and she is freed. No long need she live out of the past realities she has assumed and others have placed on her. Jesus says to her that her coming to consciousness has broken the bounds of the past and to go now in peace.
Luke is maddening because here is another story that does not follow the woman to find out what she does with her life. It is enough for the moment of Grace to happen, the moment when we see the world in a new way. Now it is up to us to live in holy hospitality. And the good news is that it is not a once in life time get out of jail card, for it is away of existing in the world., redemptions continues in each moment.
When we feel deep down this persuasive love we will be formed by it. And this is a realistic assessment of our situation. Our way of being is to be those who bring love and compassion and justice. It is realistic because it also knows that we are finite and fallible people. We are not defined by our missteps but by our attention to the present and thus creating a future for ourselves and for others.
What the narrative invites us to let loose of those definitions of ourselves that keeps us in bondage. The narrative invites us to use this graceful way of being in daily activity. Being freed we offer the hand of freedom to others. That is now our identity - our passion - our vocation.

all we need is love

2013-05-24T13:40:28-07:00

May 26, 2013                                                                  Carleton Memorial United Church
May 26, 2013

Acts 2: 1-21                     All we need is Love    The Rev. Dr. George Hermanson

In our Acts passage we get the marching orders for the church. We may puzzle over the meaning of the coming of the spirit. They did then. The watchers ask if the disciples were drunk.

It is called ecstatic speech. We have all some experience of this when we are so excited we cannot get out our words or they tumble over one another. Then there are times the moment of awe is so great we say nothing. There is nothing magical about this experience, and the writer of Acts uses colorful and metaphorical language to tell of a moment when the world changed.

We all have a moment or event in which our world changed. We heard or saw things in new ways, heard or saw things that we had never had before.   Our world was changed, we were changed.

One of those moments was when I was sixteen. I had gone to the touring group from Jazz at the Philharmonic. Lester Young came on stage and I heard music like had I never heard it before. The very fact I can remember, and actually see the event today, tells you have profound it was. It was like a pentecost event. I found music that moved my soul.

Music is one of the ways we are transported. It touches our mind and our body, sometimes we cannot stop the rhythm moving our body.   Music also illustrates changes in our culture. When something new comes along there is a resistance. When Bach began he was not universally accepted. When the piece Rites of Spring was played in Paris there were riots.   When the Jazz age began there were parents who warned their children about the evils of the music. Blues players played in smoky clubs and white children were warned about the evils of the music. Then Elvis, then the Beatles, then Bob Dylan who brought together folk and rock, and then punk and on and on. Each time there was resistance. Yet, looked what happened to those kids who snuck into blues clubs, they lead to Elvis, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones. The movement of the Spirit.

The event of Acts can be relived in our experience. Listen to Kim.

(Kim Plays)

The experience in Acts was a tipping point and a new narrative about history is created. This is caught up in the phrase, go with the flow. From sports to music, the experience is described as flow. Flow denotes holistic sensation present when we act with total involvement.

We flow with the wind. Wind is a good metaphor to explain tipping points. For the wind is uncontrollable. Wind blows on and on, changing the contours of physical time and space. After the event we regroup and ask what now? Winds ,as learned again this week, can be destructive. In such a time we must regroup. We may be mere specks in the universe, but we are specks imbued with God's love. We may stand at the mercy of winds and rain, but we find shelter in God's care. And we shelter one another.

In Acts they go back to the tradition. Visions will come to all - to all age groups - to all classes of people. It is the vision of God. It is the dream of God. This dream is for a world and for individuals to be healed and restored to right relationships. It is a dream of sustainable creation and inclusive community. The people are invited to join this dream. They are invited to be the hands and feet of the dream. They are invited to make it real.

The wind of fire and Spirit asks us to go beyond our comfort zone. In that moment of experience that which was experienced as broken was now made whole. The story of many languages refers to the problem of Babel. There hubris drove people away from the source of love. Here, in the many languages, is an affirmation that the dream of God is one of pluralism. Many colors. Many voices. Many languages. What is offered is consolation, which is the experience of genuine happiness and spiritual joy.   Now, one can move forward doing good. This comes after much disciplined attention and practice.

What is called from us is love. We feel the love of God in a transforming moment. In old language it is called conversion. We feel it in the music. In fact we can sing old gospel tunes, not because of the words, but because of the music, for touches us, calls to us to love and share. This is why I choose some songs from More Voices, for they capture the feeling of the music with words that more reflect our faith. The love of the Spirit within us. The love within begins a healing process, touches and reminds us, God loves me, I am worthy. Then, as a whole person, a loved person we go out to heal the world. From the personal we move outward. What are the issues of our society? We respond with food banks and grain banks.   This is important care and it also demands us to ask why are there such needs? Knowing the needs are created by social structures and values, we then seek in the political realm the healing of the brokenness of society. This is the movement of the spirit in our time.   We are lifted as Kim leads us again in All you need is love. There's nothing you can do that can't be done. ...
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time - It's easy. All you need is love, all you need is love.

It is all about relationships

2013-05-10T11:45:03-07:00

May 12, 2013,                      It is all about relationships           The Rev Dr. George Hermanson                                                           Fallowfield and Merivale United Churches

Have you ever noticed how your awareness is affected by what you read or are thinking about? A certain theme floats around in your subconscious. Then one day something catches you eye, speaks to you in what you have read. Then you see things that you have not really noticed. They become vivid. They speak to you in new ways. Our habitual way of being is challenged.

Habit is interesting. It helps us do things without reflection. It organizes our daily living. This is Mother’s day for most of us. The church tried to change it to Christian Family day but the habit of Mother’s day is just too strong.   The power of Hallmark is just too strong. What it does is it appeals to our need of relating, for we would not be here without a mother. Habit gets us through those mundane things and it can also make us miss a deeper meaning. In the case of Mother’s day we have lost its original meaning. In 1872 Julia Ward Howe, reformer and poet and the author of the lyrics to the Battle Hymn of the Republic, issued a Mother's Day Proclamation. She was the first in America to suggest that a day each year be set aside dedicated to honoring the ideals of motherhood and peace. For the next 8 years she celebrated the holiday, "Mother's Peace Day" with a group of women in Boston. The women who originally celebrated Mother's Day conceived of it as an occasion to use their status as mothers to protest injustice and war. In 1914 Anne Jarvis vowed to honor her mother's political activism by creating a national Mother's Day. Thus Mother’s day.

I remind us of this history because it tells us of importance of relationship and the reason we gather to celebrate our relationships. Also to remind ourselves that we need to ask questions about our habits, to find the meaning embedded in them.

Our desire to celebrate Mother’s Day speaks to our need of community. The way it is used speaks to the fact that even good ideas can be corrupted and be used in ways that lessen our relationships.

Peter Berger called our time the homeless mind. What he suggested is we work out our identity in a world that has lost its center. Our reality is defined by the question of whether we live in a society or an economy. Society means we live in relationships for good or ill. Economy means we serve the interests of commodities - who we are is determined by our consumption not by what we do to enhance the common good.

We have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and our democratic structures. We are losing social capital. A sense that reality is created by relationships, by connecting with one another.

The good news is there is a way of being the church that helps us build relationships. We can rebuilt habits of the heart that create a sense of ourselves as belonging to a community that cares about relationships.   Congregations are reinventing themselves, rediscovering the idea of holy hospitality. Which is all about relating to one another and the common good. It is learning to discover spirituality that informs life.    It is to experience the lure of God as the basis for relationship, because the nature of God is the one who seeks relationships, not only seeks to relate but needs to relate.

If God is still speaking, what are we hearing? Or “are we even listening?” God’s voice seldom comes in a dramatic way. It is often a “sigh too deep for words.” How do we listen for God in our lives?   Christian spiritual teachers have reminded us that hearing God in our lives is nurtured by commitment to prayer, meditation, worship, and hospitality. Are we quiet long enough to hear God’s still, small voice, or “whispered word” (Marjorie Suchocki) amid the storms of life?

Our reading of Paul is about creating of relationships. Paul goes to a new community. In it is a woman who had been a god seeker - a gentile who is part of some Jewish prayer group. Paul speaks a word, Lydia becomes unbound-finds new energy in his words and is moved. Notice the next action - she and her household are baptized. Her household. Now in our individualistic age we find this a bit quaint. After all have we not heard people say “my mother made go to church and that is why I don’t now.” My answer is always is “I see your mother still determines your actions.” The comment is a sign of the break down of a relational world. What it signifies to me is we have failed to transmit the faith for what we have done is transmitted obligation - not the excitement of the spiritual exploration.

This is the negative side of relational communities. When they lose their dynamic nature they are in the mode of survival, or dogmatism, or the preserving of the status quo. This is when faith is turned into community control. When religion goes bad, like all repressed activity, it emerges in destructive and distorted ways.

For a whole household to be baptized today means an encouragement of a relational community that celebrates holy hospitality. This means the affirmation of seeking and searching, an affirmation of difference within a whole. This is a community that does not seek for social conformity but one that seeks to create people fully alive, singing many songs, painting many images, weaving quilts of many colors, knowing each tread is crucial to the whole image.

At our best we live this relational reality. It is checking in with a neighbor. It is to offer communal prayers for one another and our world. It is to explore the insights that push us into new insights. It is to find the lure of God in unexpected places.

This is this church’s gift to this community - the willingness to risk and let go. Is this not the reality of God’s love for us? Which is always said metaphorically - a Mother hen who cares for her young.

We honor the need for relationships by Mother’s day.   To honor the gifts given we need make them our own.   It is to build on the positive gifts of relationships.

A Spirituality for Our Time with Jay McDaniel

2013-04-24T06:56:13-07:00

A Spirituality for Our Time with Jay McDaniel
On June 17 to June 19 the Madawaska Institute for Culture and Religion will be hosting Dr. Jay McDaniel. A Spirituality for our Time
He will examine the questions of prayer, ecology, interfaith, and aesthetic so we can form a spiritually that will ground us in our faith journey.
*Through Buddhism and Christian traditions we will deepen our faith.
*Through poetry and jazz we will celebrate the harmonies of the universe.
*Through conversations we will add intensity to our experience.
*Taking seriously the complexities of our time we will form a theology that will sustain us and our actions. We will work on creating two kinds of harmony: harmony among people and harmony with the earth.
*We will work on a bridge between cultures that is socially just, ecologically sustainable, and spiritually satisfying.
Dr. Jay McDaniel brings with him a grounding in Buddhism and Process Theology. He will also bring his current experience of working with Process Centers in China. He teaches at Hendrix College as Professor of Religion and Director, Steel Center for the Study of Religion and Philosophy. His current work includes the development of an organization called “Ecological Civilization International.”

He says "My aim as a teacher at Hendrix is to help students understand how people live and think in different parts of the world when they are shaped by religious points of view. It is also to help students develop "philosophies" and "theologies" of their own in dialogue with the many religions and also with people who are not interested in religion. I think of myself as a "constructive theologian" and encourage my students to recognize that they, too, can be creative thinkers in their own right. Understanding others and creatively responding to what one learns: these are the guiding ideals of my teaching."
For more go to http://www.jesusjazzbuddhism.org/
The cost will be $225. It will be located in Burnstown Ont. To register contact George Hermanson at george@hermanson.ca Pre register by May 15, deposit of $25 and the event will be $200.

The Shepherd

2013-04-18T13:10:11-07:00

The Shepherd as Outcast
John 10: 22-30            The Reverend Dr. George Hermanson           Easter four, April 21,2013

In works of literature we always have an introduction to the characters, and as we read or watch we get to know them better. This is the case of todays texts - have two main characters - the lamb and the shepherd. First we are introduced to is the lamb. Psalm 23 is told from the viewpoint of the sheep, not the shepherd.

However, the image of us being sheep can be problematic. It can be used to put down those who follow without a thought. It is kind of mindlessness that some critics of religion place on believers. I think most of us are uncomfortable with being thought of as unthinking, sheep like followers. Helpless like sheep. We are not really happy with this sense, for after all do we not have strength and power to deal with the issues of life?

To understand the characters we have to move back in time to see how sheep and shepherds were understood.   The lamb was the symbol in the Passover of the liberating acts of God, from slavery to freedom, from no people to a people. It was the risk and venerability of the lamb that the poet was getting at - in the 23th Psalm - it was from the view point of the lamb who now has no fear, for the rod and staff comfort. The shepherd of shepherds cares for me, as the hymn puts it. Now I can face my enemies - external and internal - and overcome in love. It is a realistic understanding that there are wolves who seek the end of the lamb. There is danger out there in the world. The obvious image is the role of the shepherd is keep the wolves at bay - to protect. Comfort.

Yet while we have the image of the shepherd as a protector within the culture of the time,
shepherds were the outcasts of society - like the fishers they were unclean by vocation. The were threatening and not turstworthy. Competing images. Comfort and threat. Unthinking following and being cared for from a place it was not expected.

The writers of the bible play with images because in the tradition there is the whole kingly image of the shepherd. But it is a strange image for a king - the boy shepherd David becomes the king. A reversal of all conventional images of power and prestige. So the image the power of God as that of the shepherd again would be a puzzle - protection that comes from being from persuasion not coercion.

Competing images. Comfort and threat. Unthinking following and being cared for. The good shepherd, the shepherd who guides you through the valley of the shadow of death, evokes a sense of calm and strength. And the lamb was an image of sacrifice, so here is the shepherd who is both lamb and shepherd.

Here the good shepherd is the sign of divinity. The lamb of sacrifice being the force of love that overcomes the threat of Imperial Powers.   It turns all images of kingship and power upside down. From the outsider comes redemption. From the edges of experience comes resurrection life. It reinforces the biblical theme that God upsets the notions of respectability. It reinforces the images that the God of love welcomes all who society would call the least.

In the shepherd and the lamb the different parts of experience are brought together.   Shepherding in this sense creates us as persons and as communities. The shepherd illuminates the lure of God that unites in beautiful, symmetrical harmony things we often see as unrelated.   Our varied, complex pluralistic world, with many different perspective are in the shepherding care of God formed into a complex unity.

It is the lamb of God who experiences our suffering with us and is not overcome. It is the shepherd who walks with us, feels with us, who gives us the strength to be the lamb and shepherd for others.

This is a story of empathy. It is the dual function of God who is both lamb and shepherd. It is a powerful image of the God who protects us and suffers with us. The protection takes place in suffering and we are not stuck there, we are not defined by it, for with support and love we can live with it and through it. With the help of others we can overcome suffering. Together, we can build a new kingdom of love on earth.

The images speak of an inner reality that binds us together. Empathy is the spiritual ability to feel our way into another’s place, to feel our way into another’s person. It is the ability to indwell in the other, and this is the ability to connect.   We come to know our selves through our interactions with others.

It is not what we say, look like or believe that is crucial. What is crucial for the common good is how our faith leads to action. It is to be surprised by love.

We need love. We need the unconditional love of persuasive love to get on with the getting on. What we need to do is to recognize it breaking out in the unexpected places.

We know those people, named and not named who can be counted upon to speak justice and compassion to the forces that seek to destroy. We know those who use persuasion to bring hope to chaos. They are the Nelson Mandals, the Martin Luther Kings and those whose name never hit the front page. We have all had a shepherd who revealed to us the persuasive love of God for all of creation. Know what.   We too can be that shepherd. Know what. We have been that shepherd who brings healing comfort to those in pain, who feel in our very being the fears of the world and are not undone. We have been those who have kept the wolves of life away. We are called to this vocation.