Easter Season - Year C -- 2019
Indexed by Date. Sermons for Easter Year C
Acts 10: 34-43
Psalm 118
John 20: 1-18
Back when I was a student at Atlantic School of Theology, sometime in the past century, the Chairperson of the Education and Students Committee of Halifax Presbytery, loved telling those of us who were from “other” Presbyteries that “we had it easy” because the students from his presbytery had to recite the “pre-Nicene Creeds” from memory. Well that seemed like a good reason to give thanks, until I learned enough to know that I had known these creeds since well before I entered theological school. Aside from the Apostles’ Creed, which I memorized as a teenager, and which is about 100 years older than the Nicene Creed, there are NO formal creeds that are earlier than that. They simply don’t exist! Yet, at least two “faith statements” are fundamental to the Christian community, from its very beginning. They are “Jesus is Lord” and “Christ is Risen”. I’m not sure if the Rev Bill Gibson was surprised that I knew that those creeds were, or not, but he told me that “I had passed”.
Even though the churches of the Eastern Rite celebrate Easter on a different day than we in the west do, it is the Easter proclamation that is fundamental to Christianity. (remember to wait till next week to wish Kelly from the Pizza shop a “Happy Easter”)
Easter is certainly more important than Christmas in the life of the church.
Christ is Risen!
Christ is Risen Indeed! (Ok you can do better than that, put some oooomph into it, please! )
Christ is Risen!
Christ is Risen Indeed!
Remember that for next week, please! I’ll be doing that again! After all Easter is not just one day, it is a season of 50 days.
Years ago I discovered a wonderful little desert plant that can “die” and be revived over and over again. It is the Selaginella lepidophylla, otherwise known as the Rose of Jericho. I have had the one you see on the screen for over 20 years. It was mailed to me by an internet friend in a milk carton filled with popcorn. Apparently, where he lives you can buy them just about anywhere - they are a common novelty item. I used to bring it out almost every year, and revive it, but it’s been dormant in the drawer of my antique sewing machine most of my time here.
Over the past 30 years, I’ve killed plants with too much sun; with not enough sun, with too much water, with not enough water, and with the trauma of being dumped out on the floor by my cat, but with the Rose of Jericho, you would have to really work at killing it; I haven’t tried a chest freezer! One of the kids in the Sunday school in Wallace called my plant, “a dead donut”. Yesterday, my sister saw it on the kitchen counter and called it a piece of “seaweed”.
There are lots of scientific explanations about how this somewhat ugly plant can live for years without water and in a matter of hours come back to life. I’ve done a mini time-lapse segment for you on the following slides. I must confess it WAS a little quicker this time because I did a trial run about a month, ago but it really was in the back of a drawer for years. Last month it took a lot longer to spring to life.
Despite the scientific explanation, it is still amazing to watch this dried out, seemingly dead piece of vegetation, that looks like an enormous “dust bunny” spring to life. It makes as good a children’s story about Easter as does the life cycle of the dragonfly or the butterfly. Despite what we know about the science it is still surrounded in mystery.
The one thing about the resurrection stories in the wide variety of them and their contradictions. Each account in the gospels and in the book of Acts almost seems to refer to a different event altogether.
I’m told that if the police are interviewing witnesses to a crime and all of the witnesses have the exact same story then they are quite suspicious the witnesses have coordinated their story. According to the tv crime shows, at least in the USA, witnesses in a trial are not allowed to hear the testimony of the other witnesses so that the testimony of a previous witness cannot influence that of a later one.
The earliest Easter morning statements begin with simple confusion. “He is not here.” That combined with the question to the one presumed to be the gardener, “what have you done with him?” does not constitute any kind of “faith,” just an ability to observe what could really be obvious. If we see an empty grave, that was filled yesterday, we assume that someone has taken the body.
It’s the next part, of today’s two part passage that results in the “faith statement”. The faith statement came about when the followers, beginning with Mary, came to believe, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they had experienced the Risen Christ. When Mary encountered the Risen Christ, and knew him to be truly alive - that she could begin to proclaim what became the primary proclamation of the church: Christ IS Risen.
In the coming hours, days and weeks, the small group of followers would encounter this presence and they too came to believe, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Christ had been raised.
It is impossible to verify these experiences by any modern scientific standard. In some stories Jesus is able to eat; in some he tells them not to touch him; in another he offers to allow Thomas to touch the wounds from the crucifixion. In some accounts he can go and come at will from a locked room. In another he can light a campfire and cook breakfast for his friends. Perhaps we should not even try to nail down these experiences - and take them simply as the faith statements that are the foundation of the church.
You see, it’s not that Jesus body was gone from the tomb, that has made Easter what it is, it’s that Jesus was present in their lives in a way that enabled them to hold on to, through trials and persecutions. It is the presence of the Risen One in the lives of countless believers in the 2,000 or so years since Jesus lived on this earth as a human that has made Easter real. It is the conviction that his message was more powerful than all of the evidence and messages to the contrary; it is the conviction that the way of Jesus is the way to true life, to true fulfilment and in the end is the only thing that really matters.
Every so often a discovery happens that calls into question our whole way of looking at the world in which we live. We all know the earth is round and that it takes a year to travel around the sun. We experience what we call “sunrise” every morning and the rise of the moon at night. Humans have known this for hundreds of years. Yet, if we were standing on the moon, you could see what has been called “earth rise”. This picture was taken in 1968 by astronauts orbiting the moon. This stunning full colour picture of earth has given human beings a completely different perspective of this fragile planet and, in the words of one author was "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken". When we stand here, on earth, we cannot see enough to give us the any kind of perspective. We can only see us and this and we are indestructible; but when we get off the planet and go elsewhere we can see how small we really are. 200 years or so before the birth of Jesus, Archimedes famously stated, “give me a place to stand and I can move the earth.”
The point of these references is that our understanding is limited to so many factors that we need to broaden our understanding by adopting a broader and bigger one.
As individual humans, we live in a world of sorrows and frailty, and we know that death is to be feared. Yet, Easter asks us to trust in the one who has surrounded creation in love since the very beginning. We are asked to trust in the word of the Mary’s of the world that in their experience, if not in our own, the God of life has the last word.
The God of life has told us that love will win over hate. That life will win over death.
So
Christ is Risen.
Christ is Risen Indeed.
Amen!
Acts 5: 27-32
Psalm 150
John 20: 19-31
or
How Can I Keep From Singing?
And now the time has come for us to say goodbye - if I had the talents of a couple of members of my grad class at Atlantic School of Theology I would write something like they did 32 years ago for the United Church Class of 1987 final swan song. I do have the sheet of lyrics in a file somewhere and could have probably found it quickly if everything from that filing cabinet wasn’t in a box that’s now taped shut. Every so often I come across it and smile, remembering the years to which it refers. I believe we may even have had three songs. I believe we parodied Frank Sinatra and “My Way”; in one of them as we felt we were a class that marched to the beat of our own drummer.
For songs like that to be “good” they need to be sung to a recognizable tune and refer to events that everyone in the class would remember. And you have to be selective; the pranks - didn’t make it in.
Now, just to allay your fears about me singing an original song on this, my last Sunday here - it wont happen. But I might come close.
A lot has happened in the life of this congregation in the last 4 and eight months. I came here to Avon United just after an amalgamation and a name change - Lot’s of Hantsport folks kept referring to St. James when I first came here but I rarely hear that anymore!
Since names are so important it IS hard to change something so vital to one’s identity. Friends of mine got married a few years ago and they invented a new name from their former names and both now go by this new surname. I caught onto it right away, but a year or more after their wedding, I was taking minutes for a meeting - and in one of the motions I typed in her old name without even thinking. Her correct new name had even been listed in the attendance section of the same minutes!
Here are Avon you had a brand new sign out front with the new name on it - to tell yourselves and the community who it is that worships in this building.
When I arrived in 2014 there were still many things to decide. We struggled with the future of the Sunday School, the worship time and other matters. We all tried to learn the names of the new folks from “the other congregation” as we worked to integrate 2 congregations into one.
Meanwhile, the life of the congregation continued on with the work of the UCW, the Session and the Stewards and Trustees. The Prayer Shawl group continued to meet and ur outreach to AA “grew” by added a meeting night.
After donating one of them to Dykeland Lodge, the Juniper Grove people brought with them a couple of windows, seen here on the walls, and artifacts such as the bells mounted on the wall behind the piano. And, and of course, 2 cases of beautiful looking and beautiful sounding handbells. We switched out the pulpit furniture and now have a “lower communion table” and an “upper communion table”. They both come in so handy right where they are; every church should have two! Thanks to the bridge funding from Juniper Grove, we have a beautifully crafted cabinet to display artifacts from all of our founding congregations and to store our current worship supplies. If we were describing the cabinet in a fancy magazine we would call it “bespoke” or, “one of a kind and made to order”.
Like any marriage though, we have had our struggles and need to work on the relationship on a continuing basis.
Those who were St James people still need to remind themselves they’ve only been part of this congregation for a little under 5 years - this building may have been your church home for your entire lives, but, the amalgamation and the associated re-naming, signifies that the clock has been re-set, as it were, and everyone joined Avon United Church on the same date even though some of you do know where the huge coffee urns and the Christmas decorations are kept and didn’t need a new key!
Since most of us have been associated with the United Church for many years, though, in a time of transition affecting almost every United Church in the country, we need to move from asking “what have we always done” to “what is is God calling us to do in the next part of our journey?” That is not as easy a question as it would seem at first.
Like many communities of faith, both large and small, you struggle to find enough people to do the work of committees and the “hands on” ministry of the church.
However, you are also a very blessed congregation. You have financial resources that are the envy of many congregations, even much larger than yourselves.
My hope is that any move to part time ministry wont be an excuse to say, “Whew, we don’t have to work so hard anymore?” My hope is that since you are not going to have so large a payroll as you would with a full-time minister, if that is what you decide, that you can use some of that money to make a difference in the community. It will do no good sitting in the bank! That’s not why a church has money!
You have such an awesome resource to be able to do something you otherwise couldn’t for the people of this community. Look around, see what needs doing that’s not being done and prayerfully consider how you can contribute to that!
I participated in a webinar with half a dozen other clergy from across Canada on Thursday and one clergy couple who participated said, “our congregation’s goal is to bless our community, not to get more people in the pews”. So, think outside the box! Dream! Let the Spirit lead you. Show that you are the hands and feet of Christ in this place.
Speaking of those hands and feet - today’s gospel has the disciples and friends gathering in a locked room in fear. Jesus had been crucified, died a horrible death and was buried, but by now most of his closest followers have had an experience that caused them to believe that Jesus has risen from the dead. John tells us that the doors are locked because they are afraid of “the Jews”. ((In an era of rising ethnic tension, and antisemitism in the culture and in the church, I think it’s vitally important we hear that it wasn’t all of Jerusalem against the Jesus people - it WAS NOT all “the Jews”. We need to remember that the Jesus people, if I can call them that, were also Jewish. I believe the first followers called themselves “the way”! There were a few people who were making it hard for the first followers - albeit a few very powerful people with connections to the military authority of Rome. So when we see or hear the phrase, “the Jews” lets not apply it to all the Jews of this time and to NONE of those who call themselves Jewish today!))
Jesus’ friends had locked the doors because they were frightened, and understandably so, that they might be next! The power of Rome tolerated no dissension and a dozen more deaths would not have troubled them at all, In the years to come many would die for their faith.
Thomas, one of the 12, had not been with the others when Jesus appeared to them so when he issues his “ultimatum” (I have to touch his wounds BEFORE I will believe) he is really only wishing for the same experience as the others. Thomas wont even be satisfied with replaying the event on YouTube over and over again! He wanted no “second hand” experience! He wanted a first hand, direct, hands on, encounter with the Lord of Life. To call him “doubting Thomas” is totally undeserved! In the other story in which he plays a primary role he is the courageous one; Thomas is the one willing to go into danger because their mission on that day demanded that they go to that place.
But this is not about history, this is about us. This is our issue too. We are Thomas. We have not been with the “others” and had that kind of experience of the Risen Christ, have we? We too are not willing to sign on the dotted line when we feel we have “missed out” on something significant.
The question is: What do we want to see? What tangible expression of the presence of the Living God do we want; what proof do we crave? How do we want our experience of the Risen Christ to intersect with our lives?
The question is: How do we who are in the church enable that experience to take place? Are we a people who model the presence of the Risen One in the midst of our own brokenness to and for those who are struggling and seeking fullness of life? Or do we keep it to ourselves and keep our faith within these walls, taking it out only one hour a week?
Don’t we follow someone who knows what it’s like to be human like we are and to suffer because he did the right thing, not the easy thing.
In this story Thomas encountered, as was his desire, the wounded one, the one with pierced hands and side.
This is the season of Easter, the season of new life, the season of hope driving out despair. Yet in Easter we do not forget about the wounds and the suffering; we allow the power of God to transform it and bring new life from it.
Juanita (the organist and choir director) asked me a few weeks ago what I would like the choir to sing on my last Sunday with you. It’s was a hard question to answer because there are so many hymns that I like in Voices United and in More Voices. I finally chose the one you heard them sing a few minutes ago.
I read somewhere that “those who sing, pray twice”. It seems that words set to music sink deeper into the heart and soul that mere proses can. Poetry runs a close second. I believe that we are called to build a house of love, a “Church” where all those things can take place - and a church that remembers that it is a house of flesh and blood, NOT primarily of bricks and mortar.
But, before I wrote the introduction to the sermon about our “class song” I thought of the words to another hymn. It’s sentiment was used in our newest expression of faith in the United Church called, “a song of faith”. It was also adapted and sung by folk-singer and social activist, Pete Seger.
1 My life flows on in endless song, above earth's lamentation. I hear the sweet, though far off hymn that hails a new creation. Through all the tumult and the strife, I hear the music ringing: It finds an echo in my soul - how can I keep from singing? 4 I lift my eyes; the cloud grows thin; I see the blue above it; and day by day this pathway smooths, since first I learned to love it. The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart, a fountain ever springing: all things are mine since I am Christ's - how can I keep from singing?
If our song is more truthful, more heartfelt than our speech we are called first and foremost to sing, to proclaim what God has done and is doing in our lives and in the world and how we can be a part of that mission.
The disciples faced great opposition and, as far as I know, all 11 of the original disciples are thought to have been martyred. The one that had walked among them , taught among them, and lived among them was now among them, in a different way, with wounded hands and feet. He surrendered his life so that they would know, in the depths of their souls, what mattered to him and to the God of heaven and earth - and that they would never be alone.
We’re not in this for good days, or for a few days, but for the long haul, for the rest of our lives. Having a song to guide us makes it just a little easier!
Think of your favourite song.
Pause Now - do you go over just the words or do you also hear the music? Have you ever tried to sing a song in our head without breaking out into at least a hum?
God does not call us to keep our faith to ourselves - God calls us to sing it - to live it - as if our life depended on it, as if it was as important to us as breathing itself.
When we live in the power of resurrection how can be stay silent? How can we keep from singing?
Amen.
Acts 9: 36-43
Psalm 23
John 10: 22-30
Pray with me please: God of love, you call us together into communities of faith. May my words this day and all our thoughts and actions in this time of worship and beyond these walls be to your glory and to fulfill your wish for wholeness in creation. Amen.
This is the day that God has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it!
Today is a day of new beginnings.
Today I conduct what I hope will be the first of many services here at Bridging Waters. I look forward to the privilege of preaching the word, presiding at Table and Font, at celebrations of the joining of two lives as one and at services to celebrate lives well lived. I look forward to meeting with you, over a cup of cold water, DietCoke (or whatever, I've never gotten onto tea or coffee! But go ahead if that helps you!). I hope we will meet to discover how best we, as a community and as individuals, might follow the call to be the hands and feet of Christ in this place.
I look forward to visiting with you in your homes and farmyards and discovering what it is important to you. I know that this a role that affords me the privilege of walking on holy ground and it is a privilege that is both humbling and an honour.
I look forward to learning your names, but readily admit that it is not one of my best skills. I have to work at it, so please bear with me, continue to use your name tags and when you say hello to me in the grocery store or the post office, gently remind me. I will get them all, eventually, I promise.
I read a theory on the internet a few years ago about children born with very poor eyesight, which is not corrected early enough, finding facial recognition harder than other people. It sounded good to me; or was at least a good excuse! I mentioned it to a couple of cousins, one of whom has been an ophthalmologist for about 25 years, and their counter theory was that it was a "family trait!" Apparently I get it honestly!
I hope to laugh and cry with you as we share the joys and sorrow of being human in a community of faith and in the wider world.
I look forward especially to getting to know those of you who are children. I say to the children: you are not only the future of the church, you are a vital part of the church's present. In you I see hope, possibility and the joy of discovery. I love your insights, your fresh ways of looking at the world and, most of the time, your questions! Mostly I love the fact that you have no filters yet, you say exactly what you think!
I have even found my knitting needles so when the time is right I can knit and purl and help to create shawls which will provide comfort to those in need of that expression of prayers and support. It is an important and very real ministry of the church.
Today’s passage from the book of Acts tells us the story of a "bringing back to life" of a disciple named Tabitha, or Dorcas; a woman who was important to the community of faith. We should not just skip over the fact that this woman was called "a disciple" - she is the only woman in the Newer Testament to have that honour.
As to other stories of the raising the dead, not performed by Jesus, there are several in the Newer Testament including one of a boy who was bored to death! In that little known story, what happened was that the young lad fell out of the window in which he was sitting because the sermon was going on and on and he fell asleep. He fell three stories to his death. In short, the preacher bored him to death! I find it very interesting that Luke, the writer of Acts, included it in his story of the early church! Paul, the preacher, went down the stairs and outside and threw himself on the boy and restored him to life. Two things: I'll try NOT to go “on and on”, BUT please don't sit in an open window on the third floor!
We scratch our heads at these and other miracle stories and may even scoff because lots of us have lost loved ones that even trained doctors or EMTs with the best of equipment could not save, and we prayed - and prayed hard -too! We wish that this could happen today. Yet, I think that each of these stories have something vitally important to tell us. When taken seriously and metaphorically, there are lots of experiences we have or can have where death is transformed into life.
This is the season of Easter and in it we celebrate the power of God to bring life out of death just as we celebrated the power of light over darkness at Christmas, just a few months ago. The season of Easter is a time in the church when we can proclaim the creative and life giving power of God over all those things that would seek to make us less than we are called to be.
When we open our Bibles the first story is what we often call, "the creation". In this story, (actually 2 different stories) we read of the goodness of the world as we know it, which was brought out of chaos, formed in love and named as "good".
We know that the world is often marked by sin, pain, heartbreak, and all sorts of signs that work against the goodness God clearly intended. The news is filled with stories of tragedies, corruption, murders, and political scandals. When we hear a truly “good news” story some of us are cynical enough to think, “must have been a slow news day.” We have become too jaded, too cynical. We forget to be open to grace and joy.
I believe I was a student at Mount Allison University, in Sackville NB, when I was introduced to the life, work and ministry of Jean Vanier. A Canadian, the son of a Governor General, this man gave up a career in the university sector and devoted his life to the disabled by offering a radically different kind of environment in which they could life and thrive. Called "L'Arche" or the Ark, in these homes, workers and residents live and share their lives as they seek the fullness of their potential as children of God.
This introduction was by way of a scratchy, almost worn out 16mm movie, with the theme (if not the title) "If you are not there you are missed." There are now L'Arche homes all over the world. I believe the only one in this province is in Saskatoon but the one about 25kms from my former home in Nova Scotia had a candle making business and the church I served bought all our important candles from them.
Vanier has said "Each human being, however small or weak, has something to bring to humanity. As we start to really get to know others, as we begin to listen to each other's stories, things begin to change. We begin the movement from exclusion to inclusion, from fear to trust, from closed-ness to openness, from judgment and prejudice to forgiveness and understanding. It is a movement of the heart".
On occasion, I would hear his beautiful, distinctive voice on the CBC and was saddened when I could not stop and listen to the whole spot. His message was always challenging and spiritually uplifting. His was always a voice of love; his message full of compassion and spiritual depth. On Tuesday that voice was silenced. But I believe it lives on. His legacy and his teaching will inform us for years to come. He was a great Canadian a great humanitarian, but also a man of deep faith, and even this Protestant thinks he is a true saint.
Dorcas was a female disciple in a world of men, run and controlled by men. Yet, for some reason, she was honoured and revered as a disciple. Before any kind of church structure developed, she had a place of reverence. She clearly meant something as her garments, the “stuff” of her ministry, were shown to Paul; “look what she did for us, look at how much she meant to us”. Paul seems to have decided that her ministry was worth his efforts to bring her back the her community of faith.
What this passage says to me is how important the vital ministries of service and compassion are - the simple things - hot breakfast, a soup lunch, a sandwich given in care and love.
I un-boxed my new TV the other day and since I didn’t have cable yet (that came on Friday) I watched an old DVD. You will get to know I love medical dramas. In this hospital based show a female assault victim arrived and was not able to speak. The intern looked at her clothing and noticed that one of her outfits had been mended. She concluded that this person was loved by someone, cared for by someone. If all we can do is mend something for someone, we are showing that we care. If we take out our sewing machine or our knitting needles, the garment is a sign of caring. If we put on the soup pot or take out the casserole dish we are showing we care. These are all very practical and very necessary tasks in showing love and caring. If we take out a hammer and nails and mend a fence or pick up a wrench and mend a broken coaster wagon for a child we are showing caring and love.
Such actions are signs of God’s goodness and can be a ministry that is in the same vein as those we read about in the biblical record.
The other thing I see is someone who did not allow herself to be pushed aside. In a wold of men this woman was a leader. She was a leader who was unwilling to accept the status-quo. In the course of history the great people are those who look at something and say, “I can change this; I can make a difference.”
Look in your wallet? Whose picture is on the $10 bank note. It could be a picture of Sir John A Macdonald who the first Prime Minister of Canada, but that was years before Saskatchewan was created and joined Confederation.
Or, it could be the new $10 note which you have to stand on its end to view properly. It is the picture of African-Canadian Viola Desmond arrested for sitting in the “whites only” section of a movie theatre in New Glasgow NS. I believe she was actually charged with tax fraud because the white seats cost more, but it was racism, by another name. She is sometimes called ‘the Rosa Parks of Canada” but since her action was about 9 years before that of Parks, perhaps the famous American, should be called, “the Viola Desmond” of America!!!!!!
So when you spend your next with her picture on it, remember her action which was part of the change toward equality in Canada. It is hoped that everyone in Canada will now know her name and remember the actions that made her famous.
The United Church has long had an interest in the social lives of people as well as their spiritual ones. We have sought justice and fairness where that was needed. We have sought to lift up the forgotten and to walk with the Jesus who sought light and life where there was darkness and death.
Will you join with me in this great Easter enterprise.
Christ is Risen!
Amen!
Acts 9: 36-43
Psalm 23
John 10: 22-30
Pray with me please: God of love, you call us together into communities of faith. May my words this day and all our thoughts and actions in this time of worship and beyond these walls be to your glory and to fulfill your wish for wholeness in creation. Amen.
This is the day that God has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it!
Today is a day of new beginnings.
Today I conduct what I hope will be the first of many services here at Bridging Waters. I look forward to the privilege of preaching the word, presiding at Table and Font, at celebrations of the joining of two lives as one and at services to celebrate lives well lived. I look forward to meeting with you, over a cup of cold water, DietCoke (or whatever, I've never gotten onto tea or coffee! But go ahead if that helps you!). I hope we will meet to discover how best we, as a community and as individuals, might follow the call to be the hands and feet of Christ in this place.
I look forward to visiting with you in your homes and farmyards and discovering what it is important to you. I know that this a role that affords me the privilege of walking on holy ground and it is a privilege that is both humbling and an honour.
I look forward to learning your names, but readily admit that it is not one of my best skills. I have to work at it, so please bear with me, continue to use your name tags and when you say hello to me in the grocery store or the post office, gently remind me. I will get them all, eventually, I promise.
I read a theory on the internet a few years ago about children born with very poor eyesight, which is not corrected early enough, finding facial recognition harder than other people. It sounded good to me; or was at least a good excuse! I mentioned it to a couple of cousins, one of whom has been an ophthalmologist for about 25 years, and their counter theory was that it was a "family trait!" Apparently I get it honestly!
I hope to laugh and cry with you as we share the joys and sorrow of being human in a community of faith and in the wider world.
I look forward especially to getting to know those of you who are children. I say to the children: you are not only the future of the church, you are a vital part of the church's present. In you I see hope, possibility and the joy of discovery. I love your insights, your fresh ways of looking at the world and, most of the time, your questions! Mostly I love the fact that you have no filters yet, you say exactly what you think!
I have even found my knitting needles so when the time is right I can knit and purl and help to create shawls which will provide comfort to those in need of that expression of prayers and support. It is an important and very real ministry of the church.
Today’s passage from the book of Acts tells us the story of a "bringing back to life" of a disciple named Tabitha, or Dorcas; a woman who was important to the community of faith. We should not just skip over the fact that this woman was called "a disciple" - she is the only woman in the Newer Testament to have that honour.
As to other stories of the raising the dead, not performed by Jesus, there are several in the Newer Testament including one of a boy who was bored to death! In that little known story, what happened was that the young lad fell out of the window in which he was sitting because the sermon was going on and on and he fell asleep. He fell three stories to his death. In short, the preacher bored him to death! I find it very interesting that Luke, the writer of Acts, included it in his story of the early church! Paul, the preacher, went down the stairs and outside and threw himself on the boy and restored him to life. Two things: I'll try NOT to go “on and on”, BUT please don't sit in an open window on the third floor!
We scratch our heads at these and other miracle stories and may even scoff because lots of us have lost loved ones that even trained doctors or EMTs with the best of equipment could not save, and we prayed - and prayed hard -too! We wish that this could happen today. Yet, I think that each of these stories have something vitally important to tell us. When taken seriously and metaphorically, there are lots of experiences we have or can have where death is transformed into life.
This is the season of Easter and in it we celebrate the power of God to bring life out of death just as we celebrated the power of light over darkness at Christmas, just a few months ago. The season of Easter is a time in the church when we can proclaim the creative and life giving power of God over all those things that would seek to make us less than we are called to be.
When we open our Bibles the first story is what we often call, "the creation". In this story, (actually 2 different stories) we read of the goodness of the world as we know it, which was brought out of chaos, formed in love and named as "good".
We know that the world is often marked by sin, pain, heartbreak, and all sorts of signs that work against the goodness God clearly intended. The news is filled with stories of tragedies, corruption, murders, and political scandals. When we hear a truly “good news” story some of us are cynical enough to think, “must have been a slow news day.” We have become too jaded, too cynical. We forget to be open to grace and joy.
I believe I was a student at Mount Allison University, in Sackville NB, when I was introduced to the life, work and ministry of Jean Vanier. A Canadian, the son of a Governor General, this man gave up a career in the university sector and devoted his life to the disabled by offering a radically different kind of environment in which they could life and thrive. Called "L'Arche" or the Ark, in these homes, workers and residents live and share their lives as they seek the fullness of their potential as children of God.
This introduction was by way of a scratchy, almost worn out 16mm movie, with the theme (if not the title) "If you are not there you are missed." There are now L'Arche homes all over the world. I believe the only one in this province is in Saskatoon but the one about 25kms from my former home in Nova Scotia had a candle making business and the church I served bought all our important candles from them.
Vanier has said "Each human being, however small or weak, has something to bring to humanity. As we start to really get to know others, as we begin to listen to each other's stories, things begin to change. We begin the movement from exclusion to inclusion, from fear to trust, from closed-ness to openness, from judgment and prejudice to forgiveness and understanding. It is a movement of the heart".
On occasion, I would hear his beautiful, distinctive voice on the CBC and was saddened when I could not stop and listen to the whole spot. His message was always challenging and spiritually uplifting. His was always a voice of love; his message full of compassion and spiritual depth. On Tuesday that voice was silenced. But I believe it lives on. His legacy and his teaching will inform us for years to come. He was a great Canadian a great humanitarian, but also a man of deep faith, and even this Protestant thinks he is a true saint.
Dorcas was a female disciple in a world of men, run and controlled by men. Yet, for some reason, she was honoured and revered as a disciple. Before any kind of church structure developed, she had a place of reverence. She clearly meant something as her garments, the “stuff” of her ministry, were shown to Paul; “look what she did for us, look at how much she meant to us”. Paul seems to have decided that her ministry was worth his efforts to bring her back the her community of faith.
What this passage says to me is how important the vital ministries of service and compassion are - the simple things - hot breakfast, a soup lunch, a sandwich given in care and love.
I un-boxed my new TV the other day and since I didn’t have cable yet (that came on Friday) I watched an old DVD. You will get to know I love medical dramas. In this hospital based show a female assault victim arrived and was not able to speak. The intern looked at her clothing and noticed that one of her outfits had been mended. She concluded that this person was loved by someone, cared for by someone. If all we can do is mend something for someone, we are showing that we care. If we take out our sewing machine or our knitting needles, the garment is a sign of caring. If we put on the soup pot or take out the casserole dish we are showing we care. These are all very practical and very necessary tasks in showing love and caring. If we take out a hammer and nails and mend a fence or pick up a wrench and mend a broken coaster wagon for a child we are showing caring and love.
Such actions are signs of God’s goodness and can be a ministry that is in the same vein as those we read about in the biblical record.
The other thing I see is someone who did not allow herself to be pushed aside. In a wold of men this woman was a leader. She was a leader who was unwilling to accept the status-quo. In the course of history the great people are those who look at something and say, “I can change this; I can make a difference.”
Look in your wallet? Whose picture is on the $10 bank note. It could be a picture of Sir John A Macdonald who the first Prime Minister of Canada, but that was years before Saskatchewan was created and joined Confederation.
Or, it could be the new $10 note which you have to stand on its end to view properly. It is the picture of African-Canadian Viola Desmond arrested for sitting in the “whites only” section of a movie theatre in New Glasgow NS. I believe she was actually charged with tax fraud because the white seats cost more, but it was racism, by another name. She is sometimes called ‘the Rosa Parks of Canada” but since her action was about 9 years before that of Parks, perhaps the famous American, should be called, “the Viola Desmond” of America!!!!!!
So when you spend your next with her picture on it, remember her action which was part of the change toward equality in Canada. It is hoped that everyone in Canada will now know her name and remember the actions that made her famous.
The United Church has long had an interest in the social lives of people as well as their spiritual ones. We have sought justice and fairness where that was needed. We have sought to lift up the forgotten and to walk with the Jesus who sought light and life where there was darkness and death.
Will you join with me in this great Easter enterprise.
Christ is Risen!
Amen!
Acts 11: 1-18
Psalm 148
Revelation 21: 1-6
John 13: 31-35
Back when I was a student in university, one of the ways to communicate simple but important messages to a large number of people was to paint it on a bed sheet and hang it outside the residence windows or the from the passageway between the library and the adjacent building. I remember the time when there was a problem with the heat in Bennett House, a men’s residence. The students in Bennett made a sheet sign and hung it from the building proclaiming, “No fees if we freeze” and the student newspaper featured pictures of them studying in gloves and toques! Such “sheet signs” were hard to miss. They got people’s attention.
In the passage from the book of Acts, you could say that it was the Sprit who hung out a “sheet sign” of sorts. As described, it seems to have been a large sheet made into a makeshift sort of hammock, which contained all sorts of unclean animals which Peter was commanded, three times, to kill and eat.
In order to understand this passage, at all, we need to remind ourselves of several of the “house rules” by which Peter would have lived all of his life. FIRST of all, Jewish people were forbidden to eat meat such as pork, or consume the flesh of any animal which was considered unclean - and there was a fairly long list.
SECOND of all “good Jews” did not even eat with non-Jews because by doing so, it was implied that they and their ways were ok in God’s eyes.
THIRD, and working in the background, was the belief held by some in the church in Jerusalem, that because the hope for a Messiah was a Jewish hope that converts (the male converts of course) to the “way of Jesus” had to be circumcised first as was mandated by the law of Moses. There were those who believed that this was not necessary. In the long run, the former group, often called “the circumcision party” lost the debate. In today’s passage from Acts, this debate seems to have been in “full force”. Of course, there are many stories of Jesus being criticized for eating with tax collectors and sinners and associating with gentiles but it seems to have taken a really long time for the majority of his followers to “get” his radical welcome. The inclusion of this story in the book of Acts shows that this controversy continued into the early days of the church.
But wait, we started out with a story about “unclean” animals. Is this a story about food or about people who are worthy of becoming believers in the good news of Jesus? Because of “what happens next”, it seems clear that his vision was not about food at all but about who was acceptable or not in the community of faith.
The United Church of Canada, by its very existence, has long been seen as the church that welcomes everyone. And that observation was not always a compliment!
Two of my favourite new hymns are “Draw the Circle Wide” - and “My Love Colours Outside the Lines.” They speak to me of the openness to which I believe we are called. They speak of the radical welcome that we ourselves have received and, in order to be faithful to the gospel, a welcome we need to show to others. They speak of a love that knows no barriers.
Edwin Markham, the poet laureate of Oregon in the early 20th century wrote,
“He drew a circle that shut me out- Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle and took him In!”
I recall a story told about another denomination which used to have rather strict rules about who could, and could not, be buried in consecrated ground. Sadly, a couple lost a child who had not been baptized and by church law the child could not be buried in the cemetery, but the priest agreed to inter her body just outside the fence. Soon after this loss the couple left the community and did not return for some years. When the time came that the father was able to return and arrange for a headstone he could find no indication at all where the grave should have been. He noted that the same priest was still in charge of the parish so, quite distressed, he went to see the elderly cleric to ask what had happened to his daughter’s grave. The priest said, “Well, despite my pleas I was not allowed to bury your daughter inside the fence; the bishop was quite firm on the matter. After a while I realized that the bishop did not tell me that I could not move the fence.”
Immediately after I graduated from university I became a theology student. A large and very nerve-wracking part of the process toward ordination involved interviews with committees at several levels of the church. Some of us were in the process for 7 years or more! That added up to a great many interviews. The process has changed several times in the last 30 years but there are still “many” interviews!
One of the members of the charged with conducting these interviews in the Maritime Conference had a favourite question for the prospective ordinands. First, imagine a big burly man with an accent so strong you would think he just got off a plane from “Jawja.” He posed his question to a friend of mine in this way: “speak to me of love”. She was floored, but her response must have suited him because she passed and was ordained.
We use the word “love” so often and in so many different ways that it can often become utterly meaningless. I can honestly and truthfully say, that I love my sister, my cat, and Swiss Chalet’s white meat quarter-chicken dinner with fries. Obviously, not all of those loves are equal! I was dismayed last night to find out that the only Swiss Chalet in this province is in Regina! I don’t love it enough to drive to Regina for a meal!
The stories in our Newer Testament about Jesus and the early church speak about love a great deal. When they speak of love they are speaking of a love that is self-giving, a love that arises out of God’s great love for the world and spreads out from there.
Those of us who have been in the church for our entire lives can forget about the grace of God by which we ourselves live. Over time, we can begin to think we have earned or deserve God’s love and grace. After all we try to come to church as often as we can, we do charity work, we try to avoid sin, or at least the major ones!
But earning or deserving God’s grace is a contradiction in terms! While God’s grace is not cheap, it is free. Before we try to deny God’s grace to another let us remember that we ourselves depend upon it.
Dreams and visions were a common way in the biblical times for people to discern God’s will. You may know the story in which Joseph, the arrogant and spoiled son of Jacob, had a dream that, when he shared it, caused his brothers to dislike him so much that they sold him into slavery.
When dreamers and those who receive visions are called to act on them, this may cause some friction and difficulty. Jewish people had very strict dietary laws. While there may have been good sense in some of the laws, it was enough that God told them not to eat pork, or buzzards, or scavengers such as lobster. Now I’ve never thought of eating a buzzard, I do quite like pork and bacon wrapped scallops and lobster. I intend to get at least one feed of lobster and scallops this summer when I am in the Maritimes - I can buy the pork here!
This dream would have been disturbing to Peter but it was repeated three times, for emphasis. That is a common occurrence in the biblical story. One of you reminded me yesterday that the boy Samuel was called three times. There could be no mistaking its application when his doorbell rang and he was asked to accompany some Gentiles and go to a place where he meets many others. The signs they had received the Holy Spirit were obvious and it became clear to Peter that he should not be hindering the work of the Holy Spirit. That is the crux of the passage - these were not people encountered in any old situation at all, but people who had the gifts of the Spirit.
In 1936 the United Church ordained its first woman minister, the Rev Lydia Gruchy, in Moose Jaw. She had also been the first woman to graduate from Presbyterian Theological School in Saskatoon, several years before church union. Saskatchewan led the way. It would be years before women clergy would be ordained by or serve in Maritime Conference.
Time and again people who follow Jesus have tried to shut out those who are different in some way, from positions of leadership in the church but have been forced to admit that they too have the gifts of the Spirit necessary for ministry.
But, of course, it’s not just about ordination, its about who we welcome as a brother or sister in Christ - a fellow traveller on the way. It’s about those who can sit in our pews, those who work beside us as we minister to or in the community in the name of the one who called us sisters and brothers.
So let us remember that we are recipients of God’s grace - and that we are called to welcome others - it’s just that simple. And it’s just that difficult!
Amen.
Acts 16: 9-15
Psalm 67
John 5: 1-9
I tell ya, ya gotta be quick in (this town) (Nipawin) to get across the street before the orange hand starts flashing. I’m never even to where the yellow line should be before the little walker disappears and the orange hand flashes! Maybe it just takes practice!
According to the reading from the Gospel there was a part of Jerusalem where there was a pool whose waters were said to have healing properties. We don’t know much about this “healing pool” but it seems that the “magic” was only good for one person at a time.
When the waters started to churn, a sure sign that an angel was about to do God’s work, one person could leap into action and jump in the water and take advantage of the moment of healing. In 38 years a certain blind man had never made it. As he told Jesus he was never able to get there first. I suppose someone had to tell him, “its bubbling, get up and get in,” but he could never make it. So when he told Jesus of his plight, perhaps he just rolled his eyes and healed the man on the spot saying, “take up your bed and walk away”. Just as happened so many other times, healing was part and parcel of this command to get up and walk.
Now, you would think that Jesus would be praised for doing such a good thing! Wouldn’t you? BUT, did you notice the last three words of the reading, “Now that day was a Sabbath”. Based on the principle of “end stress” this, “by the way” kind of comment points to what will turn out to be a very important part of the whole story.
So ............ NO. Not everyone would be happy that Jesus had done what he had done! First of all - it was the Sabbath, A DAY OF REST, and the man was not critically ill - he wasn’t in mortal danger, he had waited 38 years, he could have waited one more day. So Jesus broke Sabbath laws.
Second, Jesus caused the man to break another Sabbath law which was a law against carrying something (his mat) outside his home, on the Sabbath. Those laws were very specific.
We might roll our eyes at this kind of concern about Sabbath work as our culture has become accustomed to Sunday (which is our Sabbath) being much like any other day. We can do almost anything on Sunday that we can do the other days of the week. There were good reasons for those laws and the specific guidance the details provided.
Jesus was a faithful Jew and he would have been raised to respect the Ten Commandments - so he was not flouting the Law for his convenience but elsewhere he indicated that the Sabbath was made for human benefit and not the other way round. When human need presented itself he seems to have believed that this need had to be addressed.
In the passage from Acts, a vision prompts a visit to Macedonia where the apostles go looking for people who would be receptive to the Good News of Jesus. They arrived early in the week and on the Sabbath they find a group of worshippers by a riverbank. We are not sure why they were there. One of these is Lydia, a woman who was a dealer in purple cloth. Purple cloth was not just any run of the mill fabric - it was expensive and she was probably very well off. She was a woman of business in a world of men. She has a household and invited the apostles’ entourage to her house.
We should know that before the group had set out for Macedonia they had other plans but the mysterious man in the vision encouraged them to change their plans.
Although the “Official Title” of the book of Acts is “The Acts of the Apostles”, it would be better named if it were “The Acts of the Holy Spirit” because that’s who is driving the action.
I heard someone say recently, “If you want to hear God laugh, just tell God what you’ve got planned.”
I was reading the materials available for the Regional Meeting in Swift Current next weekend. One of the things I always enjoy reading are the biographies of those who are being Ordained or Commissioned, especially those who are “second career.” A common theme among many ordinands, even the ones from the Maritimes, is the dogged persistence of the Spirit in their lives.
Not long after I was ordained they brought in a new process for candidacy in the United Church. It began with what was called “a discernment committee”. This committee was designed to help someone discern in what direction this person was being led. Trouble is, many people come to this process with the answer already fixed in their head and when the “discernment process” arrives at another conclusion there can be a great deal of “weeping and gnashing of teeth”. For a number of reasons the specific process is being replaced with another but the question still needs to be asked “to what is God calling this person?”
In actual fact though, it’s not just clergy types who are called and not just individuals. We as individuals and as a community of faith need to be asking, “to what is God calling us in this part of Saskatchewan and beyond?
One of the reasons for the restructuring of the United Church and the combining of Presbyteries and Conferences was to make us lighter on our feet and more able to respond to the needs of the church and world. With fewer hoops through which to jump we could be more able to respond to the call of the Spirit. Time will tell, of course, if that actually pans out.
However, as someone who has just responded to a call - in my case it was from Karen Grayson, who, in truth, did not come to me in a vision at night - she called me on the telephone, asking “can you come to Nipawin and help us?” The first time she called was April 6, 2018. I had never heard of Nipawin. After she told me where Nipawin was, I said, “please send me your JNAC Report and I’ll give it some thought.” Later that day almost everyone in the world had heard of Nipawin - because the Humboldt Broncos were scheduled to play here that day. I was not surprised that I did not hear back. I had other irons in the fire and kind of forgot about the call from far away Saskatchewan! A number of months later I got another phone call asking, “are you still looking? We are. Would you be interested?” This time, I decided that it just might be the Spirit at work and we set up an interview by Skype. The Spirit often challenges our comfort zones . Saskatchewan was definitely not in my comfort zone, but here I am! The clincher for me was that CBC radio would have a good signal. Some places I have lived the signal is very poor - and the distances are far less than they are here! I asked that all important question and a member of the committee said, “Oh, I can get it in my combine.”
So here I am. I have three radios in the house and they all bring in CBC, sort of, as does the radio in the car.
Together we have started to listen for the calling of the Spirit. My hope is that we will spend the next number of years doing so.
This is also a Sunday of transitions - we honour graduates who are making transitions in their lives from High School to whatever is next for them - and we are finishing Sunday School for the Spring term. Gifts, certificates and Bibles will be presented as appropriate.
For many it is a time of decision-making. Sometimes those decisions are easy; sometimes not so much.
I talked with a friend yesterday afternoon and I recalled that when she was preparing to graduate from University she was trying to decide on “ministry” or “teaching”. She let the schools decide! Atlantic School of Theology sent her an acceptance letter and the Education Faculty of another university did not. So she pursued her calling to ministry.
My advice to anyone graduating these days would be to keep your options open. As a minister giving advice to anyone I would say, “don’t try and limit the Spirit”. The biblical story shows us again and again that the Spirit often has other plans, other places for us to go, other people for us to see.
The apostles learned that their planned trip would have to wait and they went to Macedonia and encountered a group who would take the church in a whole new direction geographically.
The man by the pool at Bath-Zatha had to decide if he really wanted the healing for which he had been waiting and then he had to get up and walk - thus embracing his new life.
So - the Spirit comes to us, asks us to leave our comfort zone and listen, truly listen, to what we are being called to do and be. Sometimes we have to change our plans. We are not promised a path with no ups and downs but we are promised that we will not be alone.
So, God is with us. Thanks be to God.
Amen.